Bombshell review: Charlize Theron’s transformation into Megyn Kelly is a little frightening to witness

Dir: Jay Roach. Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Malcolm McDowell, Allison Janney. 15 cert, 108 mins.

“I don’t care that you like me, only that you believe me,” Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) says defiantly. It’s a mission statement – not only for her, but for Jay Roach’s Bombshell as a whole. In telling the story of the women of Fox News, whose allegations of sexual harassment brought down its CEO Roger Ailes in 2016, the film celebrates the bravery of individual actions without heroising the people behind them.

It’s a tricky balancing act, but Roach takes a nifty shortcut here by wheeling out the kind of cinematic language we now associate with films about the morally compromised, thanks to The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short. Jon Poll edits Bombshell with a kinetic fury, replicating all the highs that money, power and privilege can bring. The camera zips through the Fox News offices, as host Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron) explains how Ailes used women’s legs as a way to get men hooked on a 24-hour news channel (that’s why the tables are always see-through).

Bombshell eventually calms down when the more sober elements of the film kick in. It adopts more the look of a documentary, while Theodore Shapiro’s score stays minimal. A chorus of female voices waxes and wanes, in tune with those who speak up and those who are muzzled. When cheerful meetings take a sinister turn, a deafening silence descends – it makes those moments all the more difficult to watch. Carlson is the first to come forward, filing a lawsuit against Ailes in which she claims he fired her after she rejected his advances. Kelly’s allegations come later. Eventually, the floodgates open. Margot Robbie plays the fictional Kayla Pospisil, who serves as a stand-in for every young woman at Fox who wasn’t safe enough to tell her story in public.

The film also covers the feud between Kelly and Donald Trump, including his accusation that she was, as Kelly puts it, “anger menstruating” during her chairing of the Republican presidential debate. It might seem odd for Bombshell to cast Trump as a side-villain in a film where its protagonists work at Fox News, but it only adds to screenwriter Charles Randolph’s wider point that women gain zero protection for themselves by upholding white supremacy. The women’s political beliefs, in that regard, are presented matter-of-factly. For liberals, hearing Kelly assure everyone that she’s “not a feminist” or Kayla call herself “an influencer in the Jesus space” will inevitably elicit laughs. Yet it’s hard to label them as punchlines when they’re just as believable as soundbites.

The cast also never lean into satire. These are studied, transformative performances. Theron disappears completely behind Kelly’s perma-flared nostrils and taut smile. Her voice deepens. Her gaze hardens. It’s a little frightening to witness – the uncanny valley achieved only through silicone and spirit gum. Lithgow’s Ailes is perfectly pitched, too: manipulative and discreet in his reign of terror. Bombshell is a hard and complicated story to tell, but its message is clear: no woman is free from the patriarchy, even if she doesn’t believe in it.

Bombshell is released in UK cinemas on 17 January