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In 1969, London’s Fleet Street was the beating heart of the British press. That same year, Rupert Murdoch (Guy Pearce) took control of the tabloid The Sun and hired the charismatic Larry Lamb (Jack O’Connell) as editor-in-chief. The partnership would go on to reshape British journalism and British society for good.
This symbolic ‘pact with the devil’ crossed every previously established moral boundary and, as a result, built a media empire which, in the decades that followed, played, amongst other things, a significant role in publicising and fuelling public interest in the story of Princess Diana, whose tragic end we are all familiar with.
Danny Boyle (TRAINSPOTTING – BFF 2024, 28 DAYS LATER – BFF 2025) tells the story with his trademark energy, using every cinematic tool at his disposal. His restless editing and propulsive storytelling keep the audience constantly engaged. You can almost smell the ink and freshly printed paper, while the analogue mechanics of typesetting evoke a world that has disappeared for good.
What has not disappeared is the question of media power and responsibility, and the social consequences that come with both. Obsessed with winning and reaching the largest possible readership, Larry insists that “people need stories”. At the same time, media professionals remain, within this system, the bearers of news, whose task is to maintain the public’s interest at all costs.
Claire Foy is among the standout supporting cast. And so the film leaves us with a question raised by its own characters: when we pass information on, are we simply storytellers? Larry’s answer is darker and far more revealing: “I’m a newsman. I make news.”
Text: Dorota Reksińska
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