Nothing But the Truth

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Movie Details

• Genre: Drama
• Release Date: 2008-12-17 NY
• Running Time: 108 min.
• Director: Rod Lurie
• Cast: Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Vera Farmiga, Edie Falco, Alan Alda, David Schwimmer, Noah Wyle, Angela Bassett, Peter Coyote, Kristen Shaw
• Producer: Marc Frydman, Bob Yari
• Writer: Rod Lurie
• Distributor: Yari Film Group
• Official Site: Nothing But the Truth Official Site

Ripped from yesterday’s headlines, Nothing but the Truth is Rod Lurie’s highly selective take on the case of New York Times journalist Judith Miller, jailed in 2005 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about the government source who outed CIA agent Valerie Plame. Lurie, a one-time entertainment reporter who writes as well as directs, has simplified the Miller affair by eliminating its political context. Rather than Iraq and the nonexistent WMDs that Miller helped persuade the world were an imminent danger, the trigger is a would-be presidential assassination that, blamed on Venezuela, precipitates a U.S. attack on Caracas. After secret agent Erica Van Doren (Vera Farmiga) apparently leaks the information that the Venezuelan connection is bogus, journalist Rachel Armstrong (Kate Beckinsale) scoops the world by identifying Van Doren as a spook. Once Armstrong lands in stir, Nothing but the Truth becomes a version of The Big Doll House. (In a piquant touch, Armstrong learns about her Pulitzer nomination in the prison yard—and is then immediately searched and humiliated by the screws.) Lurie isn’t Larry Cohen, let alone Sam Fuller, but give him points for working the same tradition of engagé tabloid filmmaking. Nothing here is as crazy as Lurie’s 2000 political thriller, The Contender. But, in the spirit of its title, Nothing but the Truth pivots on a plot twist that’s both good and fair. And kudos to the ever-earnest Beckinsale for surviving a prison brawl as splatterific as anything Mickey Rourke had to endure in The Wrestler.