The Social Reckoning Review: Network Down

But is it art? As a snarky twentysomething, I cherished a T-shirt that bore that question, a guaranteed if glib conversation starter at any bar. I thought of that shirt while watching The Social Reckoning, screenwriter-turned-director Aaron Sorkin’s followup to the Oscar-winning The Social Network. An old-fashioned, unsubtle account of how a whistleblower revealed Facebook was rigging its algorithm to juice outrage bait and prioritizing profits above all else, The Social Reckoning isn’t going to be confused for Great Art, especially when considered beside David Fincher’s exquisite predecessor. But as a super-timely drama hovering its cursor somewhere between entertainment and agitprop, it makes for a nippy, gripping two hours. 

That’s especially so if you’ve forgotten the nitty-gritty of the “Facebook Files,” the Wall Street Journal’s multipart 2021 exposé that used leaked documents to reveal the social media giant was well-aware of the harm its policies were causing – pushing users toward extremist content, impacting teen girls’ mental health, facilitating human trafficking, and amplifying anti-vaccine voices, to name a few of the WSJ’s findings. Jeremy Allen White (Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere) plays investigative journalist Jeff Horwitz, who based his series on internal documents acquired by Frances Haugen (Anora Oscar winner Mikey Madison), a Facebook data scientist and former true believer who grew disillusioned with Zuck-down policies that encouraged the radicalization of the platform’s users.

Zuck – aka FB founder Mark Zuckerberg, currently ranked fifth on Forbes’ list of richest people in the world – is not the primary focus of Sorkin’s new script; he’s more like the monster in a creature feature, top of everyone’s mind but deployed judiciously. This time around, he’s portrayed by Jeremy Strong (a stronger physical resemblance than Jesse Eisenberg) as a metal pipe-rigid alloy of megalomania and dorkitude: a one-note performance, maybe, but Strong plays the heck out of it. He’s virtuosic with Sorkin’s language – the familiar ping-ponging dialogue, the oratories, the circle-backs – but the script itself doesn’t scratch very deeply into the psychology of Zuck or anybody else. Mostly it just transmits information in not-uninteresting, sometimes even dazzlingly eloquent data dumps; these are smart people saying smart things, and making the audience feel smart for following along. Also smart: the casting of White and Madison, two intensely watchable actors, to carry roles that slot neatly into Sorkin’s usual template for heroes, wherein men are contrarian yet principled, and women are at once flinty and flibbertigibbety and, more often than not, referred to as “girls.” (Seriously, what is it with him and women?) 

The film has a kernel of corniness forever caught in its teeth – see: the eyerolling name check of a century-old stage musical, or the preposterous idea a woman could make it to 30 without understanding what a tie-game is, or the slow-motion reenactment of the January 6th insurrection. And yet, that corniness works in favor of The Social Reckoning’s sincere and defining outrage at corrupt systems, a combination Sorkin has in common with another adapter of his work, Rob Reiner. I wouldn’t call A Few Good Men or The American President works of great art either, but they’re god-tier for what they are: the kind of rousing, idea-minded entertainments movie studios used to value and movie audiences used to flock to. The Social Reckoning falls a few rungs short of those films, but its concluding call-to-action – to get angry, to demand accountability – is sure to resonate with anybody fed up with tech’s unchecked influence.

The Social Reckoning

2026, R, 112 min. Directed by Aaron Sorkin. Starring Mikey Madison, Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong, Betty Gilpin, Billy Magnussen, Wunmi Mosaku, Portia Doubleday, Bill Burr.

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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