The Social Reckoning
Aaron Sorkin returns to Facebook and untangles the greed and corruption of the platform impervious to the misinformation it facilitates.
Net profits: Mikey Madison and Jeremy Allen White
Image courtesy of Sony Pictures.
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Facts and data can be disquieting, but when you synthesise them into two hours of human drama they can make your blood run cold. Nobody loves data more than Mark Zuckerberg, the man who commodified gullibility, to quote the scenarist Aaron Sorkin. It was Sorkin who scripted the first Zuckerberg-inflamed tract, The Social Network, which won him an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. Here, he takes on the directorial reins as well and delivers a mind-spinning paranoia thriller in the vein of All the President’s Men (1976). Because his roster of characters are so enclosed in their own tech-savvy, high-end world of socio-economics we can almost believe what comes out of their mouths. But even these masters of the universe don’t speak like this, although that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the acerbic, caffeine-fuelled badinage. So, when one character, an intern at The Wall Street Journal (Kelley Pereira), finally meets our heroine Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), and is so sleep-deprived that she splutters, “it’s nice to see me,” it adds a reassuring human note. But then the film’s male protagonist, investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) is so old-school that he multi-tasks while watching Showboat. He isn’t on Facebook and is ignorant of the ways of the Internet, but he’ll do the research if it matters.
The Social Reckoning opens with a bang with a prologue titled ‘White Girl Wasted’, when a confrontation between a black police officer and an inebriated white female driver – an altercation that is both streamed on Facebook and recorded on bodycam – goes viral. It transpires that the woman (played by Portia Doubleday) has been radicalised on the Zuckerberg platform, kicking off a detective story which may seem old hat now to many viewers, but which can’t be overstated. As Facebook employee Frances Haugen notes, the government has taken action over tobacco, cars without seatbelts and the dangers of opioids and now needs to take action over the harm of social media.
At times the sum of the film’s parts seem more impressive than the whole, but Sorkin has burnished those parts so brightly that they are a constant pleasure to behold. It has been said that Jesse Eisenberg, who played the younger Zuckerberg in The Social Network, now felt too uncomfortable revisiting such a malign figure, and so the part went to Jeremy Strong. The latter is perfect at playing supercilious, overbearing characters and he nails Zuckerberg’s mannerisms practically to a fault, so that the man’s neurodivergence almost comes across as caricature. As his foot soldier Frances Haugen, Mikey Madison is often hard to understand, but it’s an impressive turnaround from the street-smart, effusive lap dancer she played in Anora (which won her an Oscar). As Horwitz, Jeremy Allen White is perfect, as are many of the supporting players.
What is reassuring about Aaron Sorkin is that he doesn’t talk down to the viewer, expecting them to keep up, an approach that can result in an almost out-of-body experience as one clings onto the spiralling strands of narrative. But what is perhaps most staggering of all is the concluding statement that reveals 43% of adults still get their news from Facebook. Approach with caffeine.
Cast: Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Wunmi Mosaku, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Bill Burr, Gbenga Akinnagbe, Nelson Franklin, Joey Brooks, Portia Doubleday, Patrick Fischler, Kelley Pereira, Anna Lambe, Aidan Laprete, Tehmina Sunny.
Dir Aaron Sorkin, Pro Todd Black, Peter Rice, Aaron Sorkin, Tony A. Grier and Stuart M. Besser, Screenplay Aaron Sorkin, from the book Broken Code: Inside Facebook and the Fight to Expose Its Toxic Secrets by Jeff Horwitz, Ph Jeff Cronenweth, Pro Des Jon Hutman, Ed Alan Baumgarten, Music Alexandre Desplat, Costumes Susan Lyall, Sound Darren Maynard.
Columbia Pictures/Alcon Entertainment-Sony Pictures.
112 mins. USA. 2026. UK and US Rel: 9 October 2026. Cert. 15.
