The Social Reckoning review: Aaron Sorkin takes aim at Facebook again in solid but sentimental drama

What do Jeremy Strong, Michael Gambon, Maggie Gyllenhaal and Val Kilmer have in common? The answer involves "recasting", where an actor takes on a significant role for a sequel by stepping into shoes that have been vacated for various reasons. As history has taught us, this has yielded mixed results, but in The Social Reckoning, the "companion piece" to 2010’s The Social Network, Jeremy Strong emerges as one of the more robust examples when succeeding Jesse Eisenberg in becoming Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

That is perhaps helped by the fact that this time around, the role of the billionaire Meta CEO is, in fact, more of a cameo. Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, The Social Reckoning relays events from 2019 to 2021, with Strong playing Zuckerberg as a reptilian and dead-eyed mogul who, as in real life, appears worlds away from the fast-talking and undergraduate genius forged by loneliness and Harvard hubris. It is arguably more of an impersonation than a performance, although impressive regardless.

The film’s real leading roles go to The Bear’s Jeremy Allen White and Anora’s Oscar-winner Mikey Madison, who portray Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Jeff Horwitz and Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen respectively. Haugen was part of Facebook’s civic integrity team but grew disillusioned by the platform’s policies towards misinformation and a strategy that appeared to lead users to extreme or harmful content. Her meetings with Horwitz ultimately led to the leak of the "Facebook Files".

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More of a traditional journalism and whistleblower drama than tech-world thriller, the film paints this central duo as two familiar figures, or even stereotypes. Madison’s Haugen is the mousy and socially awkward worker bee who’s rendered uncool for her wrist and ankle warmers, while Allen White’s Horwitz is the dishevelled but dogged journalist who leans on his interns for help with anything involving a screen. Madison plays the former sympathetically but never subtly, while Allen White’s performance is solid if unadventurous, especially when compared to Strong.

As the film opens, we are told that in 2019 Facebook boasted 2.8 billion users and a valuation of 1 trillion dollars. Throughout, Strong’s Zuckerberg maintains that the platform is merely a "cork board". "We’re not the net, we’re the public square," he says at one point with a clipped voice.

However, despite reasonable entertainment value and efficiency in telling his story, Sorkin can’t find the edge that made The Social Network so gripping. As with much of the Oscar-winner’s work as both writer and director, many scenes have no character speaking in a way that is remotely plausible and pivotal moments come off as overly sentimental. "Just as nature abhors a vacuum, Facebook abhors friction," one employee casually says to Haugen at one point, before she is then seen having multiple bizarre conversations with Horwitz about Frank Capra and Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities.

Given the electricity and economy of The Social Network’s scripted verbal repartee, this is a shame. Although perhaps it’s a case of Sorkin not being able to recreate magic all on his own, as evinced by a score from Alexandre Desplat that is disappointingly trite, especially in the shadow of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's work last time Facebook was scrutinised on the big screen.

Sorkin has stated that he aimed to make the film before the American mid-term elections, but The Social Reckoning is unlikely to make more of an incision than the recent headline-makers of Tom Cruise’s satire Digger, a four-hour documentary on Elon Musk, or the upcoming character study of OpenAI’s Sam Altman. Audiences looking for more of the same from 16 years ago will find something serviceable, but a sequel in subject matter more than spirit.

The Social Reckoning will be released in UK cinemas on Friday 9 October.

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