This was exhausting to watch. The subject matter is obviously heavy. But there have been other films that have tackled similar stories with better handling (Spotlight, for example). Pacino is good, though I’m not sure he’s really portraying Paterno much – he just seems to be doing his classic Pacino thing, albeit a bit subdued. I guess I don’t really understand the purpose of this movie. Why does it exist? I know that major events are just naturally bound to inspire docudramas. But what was the goal of this movie? To give us a look into Paterno’s side of this story? I’ll be honest, that doesn’t seem to be the part of the story that we need to be focusing on, does it? If that was the goal, I would hope that we would at least learn something new or substantive. And we don’t really. Was the purpose to try and evaluate how much Paterno knew? Well, they do give us somewhat of an answer, but I’m not sure how historically accurate it is – or if it’s even an answer at all. So in that regard, I don’t know if this is a successful film. It’s mostly just depressing. In every regard.

2.5 out of 5 stars