ITALIAN POSTER FOR THE SOCIAL RECKONING
A drab moment recalls an exciting one
I wish i could say that The Social Reckoning was a '"Sequel" to [URL="viewtopic.php?t=1590]The Social Network,[/URL] but what it's said to be is a "companion piece" or "follow-up." Something similar, in other words, but not quite as good. But don't give up on it entirely. Like everything written by Aaron sorkin, The Social Reckoning has plenty of fast, smart dialogue to keep you on your toes as you watch. If it lacks the zing and sparkle of that 2010 film written by Sorkin, directed by David Fincher and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake. No, wait a minute: this movie sucks. And The Social Network was fabulous, one of the best and most timely films of the decade. A key origin story. How did that even happen?
Start with the fact that Aaron Sorkin is not a director, but a brilliant, fabulous writer. For a change he chose to direct as well as write here, and the direction is not a great success. But even that doesn't quite explain , because if he wrote this new film, why isn't it more interesting? The information is exciting enough here, but it's being explained rather than brought to life.
The social Reckoning isn't talkiing any more about the origin story of Facebook that was the eciting meat of The Social Network. The material of social networks was also just fresher and more exciting back then. Yes, Mark Zuckerberg was going to become immensely rich but the very "social network" idea was still stimulating then, at the time focused on - and we were seeing college undergraduates cooking up ideas that were going to change the world. And best of all, stealing things from each other, and the not-so -nice guy (Zuckerberg, played by Jesse Eisenberg) screwing the nice guy, Eduardo Saverin (Andres Garfield), and watching for the reckoning, which did not come.
The new film is about a young woman crusader, Frances Haugen (Mikey Madiison, Oscar winner for Amora) . Why is it that the most memorable thing about this true-life character is that she wears gloves and has a food allergy? Perhaps that's too much the stuff of real life (though actually it's freely adapted from life, not copying her real life, which is more complicated, too much so, I suppose, for a movie).
Haugen has a lot to talk about to the Wall Street Journal reporter - a political - note, not tech - one, Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White). She has been watching Facebook for a while as an insider and observed a lot of things that have not been right. It comes out that Facebook knew numerous kinds of human harm the site was doing but chose to look the other way, prioritizing profit over safety. Damage was being done to the mental health and body image of teenage girls. The site's managers were promoting anger, division, and toxic content, political polarization and civil unrest - and this included events surrounding January 6. The site was knowingly being used to promote violence in developing nations, ethnic strife, and real-world harm.
Summarizing these things one realizes they're not easy to dramatize in a film like this. That's why instead we get a handful of loud personalities verbally sparring with each other. This includes Betty Gilpin as Christina, Horwitz's powerful San Francisco bureau chief, Anna Lambe as an uncredited babe, and Wunmi Mosaku as still another, Raya Akinola, as a powerful PR strategist advising Zuckerberg's legal and executive team as he works with them to figure out how to defend his image. Jeremy Allen White, as the journalist Jeff, is relatively pedestrian, perhaps enough so to be appealing, since it's emphasized that his assignment for the WSJ is "tech-ish"; in fact he's so un-tech, he hasn't even figured out how to use the GPS in his car.
Nobody here has the star power of Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, and Justin Timberlake in the previous film.
The most memorable character in The Social Reckoning is Mark Zuckerberg, played with stolid confidence by Jeremy Strong. He's good, but this is a character who does nothing but stonewall. He is seen being. rehearsed, not very willingly, for a hearing. The main action is between Haugen and White, and to liven things up Mikey Madison as Haugen dresses up in an evening gown to visit White as Horwitz to feed him information, to make it look like it's a date. And then, for a little color, she goes to Puerto Rico for an allergy and there organizes her revelations about Facebook - and they get to talk about banana daiquiris. These are little tidbits thrown to us.
It's not that this is a drab film, though in some ways it is. It's rather that its arrival brings back all the excitement generated by The Social Network when it was the sparkly and timely opening film of the 2010 New York Film Festival. and signaled a moment. That moment has long gone. It's fun to remember it.
The Social Reckoning 112 mins., premiered at London at the Curzon Mayfair Cinema Sept. 29, 2026, opening in many countries in Oct., in the US Oct. 9. Metacritic rating: 𝟧̶𝟤̶%̶ now 51% (Oct. 16).
(The Social Network Metacritic rating: 95%).