Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Sara Colangelo, Netflix.
This is a riveting drama starring Michael Keaton that’s unexpectedly efficacious in its intent. The movie is about a complex subject — the creation of the September 11 Victim Compensation Fund.
Based on real events in the wake of those attacks, a lawyer faces an emotional estimation as he attempts to put a dollar value on the lives lost in 2001. In Washington, D.C., Kenneth Feinberg (Keaton, Birdman, Spotlight) battles pessimism, official government red tape and politics to help the victims of the 9/11 attacks.
Feinberg is a man, who with his long-time associate Camille Biros (Amy Ryan), has done this sort of work for other disasters, and still continues doing it to this day. He is brought in by the George W. Bush administration to create a fund that would fairly compensate the victims and first responders of 9/11 based on their net worth, salaries, families and other considerations. It doesn’t take Feinberg long to realise he’s walked into a hot bed of raw emotion and numerous roadblocks.
The lawyer develops a rigid formula for each payout and is given until January 1, 2004 to accomplish this. The only fund of its kind in US history, it ultimately signed on 97% of eligible claimants, distributing over $7 billion in public money to 5,560 people. Only 94 people declined to participate.
Also a producer on the film, Keaton delivers one of his finest performances, and Ryan is also terrific. The stellar cast also includes Stanley Tucci as Charles Wolf, the husband of a woman killed in the attacks, who feels offended by the callous nature of the fund’s formula and has started a protest group. Broadway star Laura Benanti plays Karen Donato, widow of the first responder firefighter.
The 2020 biographical film directed by Sara Colangelo (The Kindergarten Teacher, Little Accidents) instills some humanity in the midst of bureaucracy.
