Newsies

SPOTLIGHT (B+) - This workmanlike drama about crusading reporters never hints at having aspirations of standing alongside "All the President's Men" in the pantheon of journalistic masterpieces. This is a surprisingly low-key film that pushes all the right buttons but never feels significant.

Writer/director Tom McCarthy once had a great run a decade ago with the nuanced dramas "The Station Agent," "The Visitor" and "Win Win," but then tossed off an Adam Sandler head-scratcher, "The Cobbler," last year. Here he teams with TV writer Josh Singer ("Fringe") for the story of Boston Globe reporters at the turn of the millennium determined to break open the story of abuse by priests and the Catholic church's longtime cover-up.

A bunch of regular joes join the cast to populate the newsroom, including Michael Keaton at the "Spotlight team" editor, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams as his shoe-leather reporters, Liev Schreiber as editor-in-chief Marty Baron, John Slattery as editor Ben Bradlee Jr., a bewigged Stanley Tucci as a good-guy lawyer fighting an uphill battle in the courts against the Vatican's American beachhead, Jamey Sheridan as a gangster-like church insider, and Billy Crudup as a conflicted attorney in bed with the top priest, Cardinal Law.

With little suspense to be had in a true story that happened 14 years ago, and lurching along at a lumbering 128 minutes, McCarthy has his work cut out for him holding our interest. But he mostly succeeds. His subdued approach earns points for restraint and class, but it doesn't make for sizzling cinema. McCarthy doesn't overplay the tension of a bunch of born-and-bred (though mostly lapsed) Irish Catholics going up against The Church in blessed Boston. But he does fumble a key plot point about the Globe's foot-dragging on the story in the previous decade. As a result, this plays like a really good TV procedural that is smart and sensible. (Howard Shore's tone-deaf, schmaltzy score, on the other hand, rarely rises above the sophistication of a "Law & Order" cluh-clunk.)

There is no denying that this is Ruffalo's movie. He disappears inside the skin of Mike Rezendes, a working-class reporter busting his hump and digging up information the old-fashioned way. He's moody and mumbly, and he's got a lot on his mind (including a wife that he (and we) never see, but he's determined to pursue the truth in the spirit of the First Amendment. In the early days of the Internet and before the latest precipitous decline in daily metro newspapering, that still seemed possible. Ruffalo sheds any movie-star pretense and finds the heart and soul of an ink-stained wretch.

Keaton is solid as the boss who seems distracted, and he gets to deliver the movie's big line near the climax. McAdams does fine work as a pushy reporter who's sweet to her pious nana. Slattery is a bit off-key in his secondary role, as if he hasn't quite completely shaken off Roger Sterling. Schreiber is practically somnambulant as Baron, a newcomer and a community outsider (and a Jew) who is just far enough removed to push this sacrilegious investigative project without qualms. The Quiet Hero bit is rather overdone, but Schreiber manages some fine moments.

The team mostly gets the newsroom moments right. Two examples show that the production team did its homework. One editor points out to another that "golf" is not a verb (it's a sport). (I once was lectured by a golf writer that the proper construction is "play golf.") And near the climax, when Baron is taking a red-pen to a printed-out final draft of the big story, he circles something on the page for deletion. "What's that?" he's asked. He replies: "Another adjective."

If you adjust your expectations, you will be pleasantly surprised and you won't mind the running time. This is solid, if not edge-of-your-seat, storytelling.