The Social Reckoning film review: Righteous rage
Hypocrisy reigns in the Meta world of Zuckerberg and co in Aaron Sorkin’s withering and compelling sequel of sorts
In David Fincher’s The Social Network we met young tech ‘asshole’ Mark Zuckerberg and learned about the murky origins of Facebook. If you thought Jesse Eisenberg’s portrayal of the eventual Meta mogul was unflattering, just wait until you see Jeremy Strong’s skin-scrawling spin on him in this follow-up. The original’s Oscar-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin takes over at the helm, while writing solo again. The Social Reckoning tells the story of data engineer Frances Haugen (Anora’s Mikey Madison), who works for Facebook’s scandalously negligent civic integrity team. When she finds out the site is driving people towards extremism, including someone she once considered a friend, Frances contacts Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), a collaboration which results in the Facebook Files exposé.
The film doesn’t reach the creative heights of its glossy and more dynamically directed predecessor, but it remains classy and compelling nevertheless. Sorkin paints Zuckerberg as a tech giant and moral vacuum, not to mention an enormous hypocrite. On one hand, he’s an unapologetic free speech absolutist; on the other Facebook is shown to be an extremely secretive and duplicitous organisation, which at one point is compared unfavourably to the mafia.
Strong doesn’t have loads of screentime, yet gives us glimpses of the insecurity, impatience and indecisiveness behind Zuckerberg’s oddly inhuman exterior. White and Madison are easy-to-cheer-on heroes and there are small but sensationally memorable roles for the likes of Wunmi Mosaku and Betty Gilpin, while Billy Magnussen shines too as a corporate stooge. Sorkin is well practised at penning spectacularly smart and funny dialogue (we’d expect no less from the creator of The West Wing), but he can also make 30-year-old women sound like 60-year-old men. There are a couple of more crassly handled moments (a hokey speech from a concerned parent for one), and the ending feels pat, but for most of its duration The Social Reckoning is riveting, important and full of righteous rage.
The Social Reckoning is in cinemas from Friday 9 October.