The film follows the events that led to the 2021 Facebook leaks by Frances Haugen & Jeff Horwitz (played by Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White).
Mikey Madison was my favorite character in the film; she was down-to-earth and likable, while Madison brought a nice sense of humor to the role, definitely showing Madison has enough star power and charisma to really carry a film.
Jeremy Allen White was also good in the film; his character was a pretty basic “investigative journalist” type, just very business-oriented and straightforward, unfortunately not much beyond that, but for what he was given, he was serviceable to the overall story.
Betty Gilpin plays Horowitz‘s boss at the New York Times, and she brought a very good deadpan sense to humor and gave some of the funniest line deliveries in the film; she was a real highlight.
Jeremy Strong plays Mark Zuckerberg, and he’s really good at capturing the mannerisms and speech patterns of Zuckerberg. I do kind of wish they had gotten Jesse Eisenberg back for consistency, but the character isn’t in the movie a whole lot and is more of the antagonist, so it being a different actor kind of fits the movie since it’s so tonally different from the first film.
Bill Burr has a very funny role as one of Mark Zuckerberg’s former investors, and I also think Burr did some of the best acting of his career and was another nice surprise for me.
The directing was kind of flat; Sorkin comes from TV, and the shots all had a very standard cutting back-and-forth between medium close-ups of that well-not-bad, pretty monotonous quick look. The film definitely could’ve used a stronger visual flair.
I like the overall pacing of the story, and it went back-and-forth in time but never got confusing.
The sofa commentary does get a bit heavy-handed at times, like trying to hold a skyscraper in your hand—levels of heavy lol, like never to the point where it gets too annoying, but you can definitely tell Sorkin brought his soap box for this lol.
The soundtrack was very standard and reminded me of a 90s movie in certain spots, but I was a little bummed they never brought back the iconic “Hand Covered Brusies” song from the first movie; there was one moment at the climax that would’ve been perfect for it.
Also shout out to the actors who played Horwitz’s interns; I had never seen them before, and they were pretty funny, so I hope to see more of them in the future.
Overall, The Social Reckoning is a fine movie with good performances all around, and it’s an interesting enough story to keep my interest, but the visuals are pretty flat, especially compared to the first one, and the social commentary is as subtle as getting hit by a truck lol. I give the movie three stars ⭐️⭐️⭐️. It's a good movie to add to a list of "It's Sunday and there's nothing else to watch” type of movie lol
