Film-maker Amy Rice spent two years on the campaign trail with Barack Obama to make a 2009 fly-on-the wall documentary. So it’s massively disappointing that her new fictional political thriller is so insipid and unsatisfying, and completely lacks any kind of authentic insider knowledge of Machiavellian political skullduggery. It’s as generic as they come, though British actor Jodie Turner-Smith is brilliant as a rookie reporter for the fictional Washington Chronicle who uncovers a scandal with the potential to blow open the presidential race.
Turner-Smith’s character, Eli James, is increasingly frustrated at having to write clickbait lifestyle articles such as “college dorm must-haves”. But when she uncovers a lottery scandal, she teams up with the paper’s Pulitzer-winning columnist Nicholas Booker (Brian Cox, giving a lefty-intelligentsia version of his alpha-ego male in Succession). Their relationship is nicely played, especially by Turner-Smith, who makes Eli a satisfyingly complicated woman: super smart and competitive, a bit reckless and most of all determined – as she’s had to be as a woman of colour in a largely male, mostly white world.
