What do Jeremy Strong, Michael Gambon, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Val Kilmer have in common? The answer involves “recasting”, where an actor takes on a significant role for a sequel by stepping into shoes that have been vacated for various reasons. As history has taught us, this has yielded mixed results, but in The Social Reckoning, the “companion piece” to 2010’s The Social Network, Jeremy Strong emerges as one of the more robust examples when succeeding Jesse Eisenberg in becoming Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
That is perhaps helped by the fact that this time around, the role of the billionaire Meta CEO is, in fact, more of a cameo. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Reckoning relays events from 2019 to 2021, with Strong playing Zuckerberg as a reptilian and dead-eyed mogul who, as in real life, appears worlds away from the fast-talking undergraduate genius forged by loneliness and Harvard hubris. It is arguably more of an impersonation than a performance, although impressive regardless.
More of a traditional journalism and whistleblower drama than tech-world thriller, the film paints this central duo as two familiar figures, or even stereotypes. Madison’s Haugen is the mousy and socially awkward worker bee who’s rendered uncool for her wrist and ankle warmers, while Allen White’s Horwitz is the dishevelled but dogged journalist who leans on his interns for help with anything involving a screen. Madison plays the former sympathetically but never subtly, while Allen White’s performance is solid if unadventurous, especially when compared to Strong.
However, despite reasonable entertainment value and efficiency in telling his story, Sorkin can’t find the edge that made The Social Network so gripping. As with much of the Oscar-winner’s work as both writer and director, many scenes have no character speaking in a way that is remotely plausible and pivotal moments come off as overly sentimental. “Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Facebook abhors friction,” one employee casually says to Haugen at one point, before she is then seen having multiple bizarre conversations with Horwitz about Frank Capra and Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.
Sorkin has stated that he aimed to make the film before the American mid-term elections, but The Social Reckoning is unlikely to make more of an incision than the recent headline-makers of Tom Cruise’s satire Digger, a four-hour documentary on Elon Musk, or the upcoming character study of OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Audiences looking for more of the same from 16 years ago will find something serviceable, but a sequel in subject matter more than spirit.
Hence then, the article about the social reckoning review aaron sorkin takes aim at facebook again in a solid but sentimental drama was published today ( ) and is available on Radio Times ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Social Reckoning review: Aaron Sorkin takes aim at Facebook again in a solid but sentimental drama )
Also on site :