With the #MeToo movement, many women have banded together in order to expose men who used their power in order to take advantage of them. From Harvey Weinstein to Roy Price, over 200 men in high executive positions have fallen from grace due to their unwanted advances on females. One of the most shocking sexual harassment scandals occurred with the head of Fox News, Roger Ailes, in which more than 20 women accused him of the claim. The new movie, Bombshell, takes a look into the scandal and the many females who it affected.

The film follows three women, Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and the fictional character of Kayla (Margot Robbie) who give three different perspectives into the harassment committed by Roger Ailes (John Lithgow). The film opens with Kelly giving insight into the world of Fox News. This includes the secret surveillance cameras planted by Ailes, what each floor of the building means and the locked door that leads to Ailes’s office. From there, the premise of the movie quickly gets established when we see Carlson showing lawyers proof of the harassment and misogyny received at Fox News and her promise that if she goes public with it, more women will come forward. The film goes through each girl’s experiences and their struggle on whether or not to speak up about them.

One of my favorite parts about this movie is that it is led by three strong females. Many films center around dominant male characters, so it was refreshing to see courageous female figures that carried the story. Furthermore, each actress delivered a breathtaking performance that made me 100% sure about who would be taking home the Oscar awards this year. Each actress had to work extremely hard to depict disturbing scenes of sexual harassment that they portrayed in an emotional and tear-jerking way. 

I felt genuinely invested throughout the entire film because it was shocking to see the real experiences that these professionals had to put up with in their workplace and the lengths other women were willing to go to protect this awful man because of the power he held. There are various scenes where Kelly is threatened for not supporting Ailes by the other women in the workplace. As a young woman, it was horrifying to me to see how harsh these ladies could be to people who had been harassed in vile ways. It was all the more proof that women coming together today to stop executives in the workplace from taking advantage of their power is a potential way to help females feel safe at their jobs. Overall, it was when people started to support Carlson that a change was finally made.

Despite being a fantastic film altogether, there were some aspects of the movie that seemed a bit out of place. The opening is presented by the character of Kelly who does so in a narrator way. This made me think that she was going to narrate most of the movie, but it only appeared in this one scene which made the whole thing feel sort of wonky. The end starts to put words on the screen which tricks the audience into thinking they are going to find out what happened to each character, however it only says that Ailes was paid off and explains nothing about what happened to Kelly or Carlson. This felt very odd considering that the movie centers around these girls yet does not mention anything about what happened to them afterwards.

I would highly recommend seeing Bombshell. The movie shares extremely substantial scenes that causes the audience to have way more empathy for females who have suffered from workplace sexual harassment or misogyny. People are quick to judge the women who come forward with accusations, but this movie embraces them for the courageous work they do to ensure that no other people have to go through the same thing.