Tracee Ellis Ross Saves the Implausible Journalism Drama of ‘Cold Copy’

There’s a certain canon of journalism films that students become acquainted with in their time studying the field. In my experience, at least, a professor would often cue up All The President’s Men, Shattered Glass, or a documentary—today’s students have a biopic—about Richard Jewell during that slowed-down period ahead of exams.

Few of these movies, though, actually capture the humbling experience of training to become a reporter. A new film premiering at Tribeca Film Festival titled Cold Copy turns these common career anxieties into a nail-biting noir. The drama follows a postgraduate student named Mia Scott (Bel Powley), whose attempts to impress her cutthroat professor, a primetime reporter named Diane Heger (Tracee Ellis Ross), lead her down a corrupt path—one involving the use of a child (Jacob Tremblay).

Despite its attempts to make viewers ponder on our desire for sensational stories, Cold Copy is ultimately more successful at delivering spectacular performances from its three leads—most notably Ross—than any sort of meaningful interrogation of post-Trump, #Resistance-era journalism. (The kind of reporting it wants to skewer is hardly that specific.)

Read more at The Daily Beast.