Movie Review: ‘The Social Reckoning’ is classic Aaron Sorkin

It is unfortunate for “The Social Reckoning” that “The Social Network” exists.

The latter is a modern masterpiece. The former was kind of always doomed to exist in its shadow. Although Aaron Sorkin can be quite good directing his own work (see: “Molly’s Game” ), it’s hard not to fantasize about what might have been if David Fincher had returned to direct this latest Sorkin script. Would Fincher’s cynicism and Sorkin’s romanticism have once again found that perfect pitch in this David and Goliath story about a corporate whistleblower, an investigative journalist and the inscrutable tech titan whose algorithms may be upending civility and democracy? Maybe?

Movie studios are known for getting fussy about calling a sequel a sequel — which I’m still not convinced makes much of a difference to an audience staring at a poster on a wall and debating a ticket purchase. Usually, it reeks of marketing nonsense. And yet in the matter of a review, I think it does make the most sense to think of “The Social Reckoning” in a kind of vacuum and to let go of the comparisons to “The Social Network.” Sorkin is not Fincher. Fincher might not even be 2010 Fincher anymore. And “The Social Reckoning,” for better and sometimes for worse, is classic Sorkin. He might have made it even if “The Social Network” didn’t exist.

Here he has a few idealist archetypes to play with, including the smart and somewhat socially awkward Facebook data engineer Frances Haugen (played by Mikey Madison), who wants the company she works for to be a force for good, one that actually wants to connect people and not divide and polarize them through hate.

She sees what’s happening and how to fix it. But no one inside Facebook wants to hear it, so she decides to leak some damning statistics to a classic movie musical-loving Wall Street Journal reporter, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White, soulful and committed as usual). He’s new to the world of tech, and Frances is frequently exasperated by his inability to understand what she’s telling him. But he’s also a seasoned investigative journalist and is committed to the long game. He even has two interns at his disposal who seem to be on call 24 hours a day (seriously, Jeff seems to make all of his phone calls in the middle of the night). But it’s all in service of snappy workplace banter and not so jokey jokes about the death of journalism.

Madison, in her first major role since her Oscar-winning turn in “Anora,” is quite believable as the reluctant whistleblower whose shaky, meek voice makes many dismiss her. But that’s just the window dressing for the bravest character in the film. She and White are well-matched. I do wonder if the real Frances Haugen dressed up in “date” clothes as a disguise to meet Jeff in his hotel room, though.

The other main idealist, and likely Sorkin stand-in, is Bill Burr’s character, a former Facebook adviser and VC who turned on the company for its refusal to fact-check political ads. He’s brought in to get under Mark Zuckerberg’s ( Jeremy Strong ) skin as he rehearses being “likable” in advance of a congressional hearing. Most of the people in the room of this parallel story arc are yes men, even, to some extent the smooth crisis PR person played by Wunmi Mosaku.

Strong is a formidable Zuckerberg, a king in wireless headphones, making ground-shaking decisions with icy, profit-minded indifference as he sits at a desk with windows all around and a ballistic couch nearby. But it’s Burr whose fiery righteousness really steals these scenes, with elegant arguments about facts, lies and the state of democracy, many of which Sorkin made in his own New York Times op-ed from 2019. Sorkin knows as well as anyone that sometimes it’s easier to hear, or at least remember, well-spoken characters in the movies than a well-crafted essay in a daily newspaper.

“The Social Reckoning” jumps back and forth on the timeline, between Horwitz’s reporting of what would eventually become The Facebook Files, and a crescendo with Zuckerberg on a very historic date. What it might lack in a cinematic engine — there are some cheesy “Newsroom” overtones occasionally — it makes up for in big ideas. There’s also a bit of an old news quality to the information we’re getting — the film ends in 2021 on a curiously optimistic note that might seem a little odd considering what’s happened since.

But Sorkin, I think, knows what he’s doing. He’s telling one story of friction that punctured that ballistic shield of power and money. The film itself might not be “The Social Network,” but it also may be an important piece of its moment: Here is a major studio movie that is taking on an unfathomably powerful figure in a smart and truthful way that was not dropped by its distributor. And that is something to be romantic about.

“The Social Reckoning,” a Sony Pictures release in theaters Friday, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for language. Running time: 112 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.