<h2>Director: Aaron Sorkin Actors:&nbsp;Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong Rating: 3.5 stars</h2>
<a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/hollywood-news/article/the-social-reckoning-to-release-in-india-on-october-9-23646989" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">The Social Reckoning</a> is, obviously, the mouse-lion, David-Goliath kinda story &mdash; the sorts, where the eventual victory of the underdog offers humanity hope and goosebumps, in equal measure.&nbsp;
And, yes, you do feel both. But to think of it &mdash; isn&rsquo;t this film the David of that story itself?&nbsp;
To be fierce yet fair &mdash; how frickin&rsquo; wildly can you possibly swing against a living man, i.e. tech czar Mark Zuckerberg, so bloody powerful that he rightly considers himself &ldquo;post-government&rdquo; (in the picture), while his might has only grown rather than diminished since the case/inquiry, as surveyed in this pic, was publicly brought to light?&nbsp;
It&rsquo;s still all about the numbers, isn&rsquo;t it? 64 is the key one for this movie &mdash; basically an expos&eacute; to do with the social media network Facebook that, at the point of its setting, circa 2020, had 2.8 billion users, with valuation of a trillion dollars.
What&rsquo;s 64? The percentage of people sent over to extremist groups on Facebook, pushed toward communal hate, through the algorithm, consciously designed such by Facebook itself.&nbsp;
What if you could, journalistically, prove this, and other stuff that made the corporation complicit in similarly divisive and dangerous moves &mdash; chasing numbers at whatever human cost?&nbsp;
Well, the proof was there. What was the real-world consequence? To the best of my knowledge &mdash; since most things around tech majors tend to be classified &mdash; Facebook merely changed its name to Meta! This movie&rsquo;s narrative can barely go beyond the metaphor then.&nbsp;
How does one make it so hugely engaging, still? Well, powering through dialogues, bordering on the literary &mdash; that writer-director <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/hollywood-news/article/the-social-reckoning-aaron-sorkin-reveals-he-was-second-choice-to-direct-film-23651984" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Aaron Sorkin&rsquo;s </a>indisputably the king of (A Few Good Men, The West Wing).&nbsp;
And two deeply relatable, vulnerable, yet passionate characters, who find a purpose beyond their profession.&nbsp; That is, the Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), and his brave source inside Facebook, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison).&nbsp;
They feel so tentative, hesitant in each other&rsquo;s company, while their relationship develops, as it only can, with unquestioningly blind trust/faith.&nbsp;
Such that if The Social Reckoning wasn&rsquo;t a corporate/political drama &mdash; it could have well been an equally watchable romantic comedy. Although it&rsquo;s highly unlikely that the thoroughly clinical, Sorkin, has a hardcore romantic bone in his body (of work)!
For the subtlety/facts of the said case, it&rsquo;s also hardly surprising that the real cinematic drama &mdash; where you sense some motion in your throat &mdash; only kicks in over the final 45 minutes of the film, leading to a finale, that had me viscerally clapping in absolute joy, while Madison pumps her fist! What a moment.
Could the movie have been restructured better for a more emotionally seamless experience &mdash; who&rsquo;s to know! The Social Reckoning is the sequel-in-spirit to&nbsp;
David Fincher&rsquo;s The Social Network (2010), also written by Sorkin.
The actual sequel, I think, are Zuckerberg&rsquo;s own depositions before US authorities in the past that we&rsquo;ve all watched live, and they&rsquo;re fine documentaries by themselves.&nbsp;
It could be unfair to compare Fincher&rsquo;s pure filmmaking finesse with Sorkin&rsquo;s more urgently talkie style. Take Sorkin&rsquo;s The Trial of the Chicago 7 (2020) on political protests/dissent that&rsquo;s proving to be so prophetic.&nbsp;
It's probably just as unfair to compare The Social Network with The Social Reckoning, but for one PoV. Which is Zuckerberg himself &mdash; far more humanised in the former (Jesse Eisenberg), gently bordering on the caricature with the latter (Jeremy Strong).&nbsp;
Or, maybe, it&rsquo;s just the visual hangover of Strong from Succession &mdash; I can&rsquo;t seem to take him out of the show, even while he plays such a different, morally unambiguous sorta guy.&nbsp;
Perhaps, more likely, it&rsquo;s gotta do with the aforementioned power and resultant self-censorship &mdash; what level of access with Zuckerberg could the filmmakers have been privileged with, anyway?&nbsp;
Consider the scenes to do with the infamous, 2021 Capitol riots in Washington in the film. They refer to Donald Trump as &ldquo;he&rdquo;, talking about him all through.&nbsp;
Contrast this with Trump&rsquo;s forceful biopic, Ali Abbasi&rsquo;s The Apprentice (2024), that pulls no punches. Strong so strikingly shone out there playing Trump&rsquo;s mentor, Roy Cohn; no?
The Apprentice wasn&rsquo;t allowed to release in India. I&rsquo;m glad The Social Reckoning, as a story, even exists. Given America, for all its other issues, continues to value rigorous, independent journalism, and such strong protection to whistleblowers. Imagine if Facebook was Chinese, inevitably the other superpower.&nbsp;
Which, of course, doesn&rsquo;t absolve the role of American tech giants in collectively warping brains through aggregating hate, conspiracy theories, fake news, history, geography, medicine&hellip; &lsquo;WhatsApp University&rsquo; has been more the recognisable concern in India. It&rsquo;s also owned by Facebook.
At the heart of The Social Reckoning is the question of absolutism in free-speech, and if you must ever draw a line &mdash; what about exhortation to violence, maybe?&nbsp;
Sorkin&rsquo;s clear where he stands on that with the film: &ldquo;Democracy is the best form of government. It&rsquo;s not the best form of everything!&rdquo;

The Social Reckoning, directed by Aaron Sorkin, explores Facebook’s role in spreading hate and extremism. Jeremy Allen White and Mikey Madison anchor

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The Social Reckoning movie review: Worth every like, comment, reshare

Director: Aaron Sorkin
Actors: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong
Rating: 3.5 stars

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