A young woman sits in a gray office — boxed in by her cubicle desk — as Fox News announces that Donald Trump has just fired FBI director James Comey, ostensibly for his investigation into how Russian interference in the 2016 election likely worked in the 45th president’s favor. Twenty-five days later, the same woman arrives back at her house in Augusta, Georgia to find two FBI agents with a search warrant for her property. She doesn’t look surprised. Within 80 minutes, this ex-Air Force member and NSA translator will have received the harshest ever sentence for the unauthorized release of government information to the media.
The woman — blond bun, denim shorts, a fresh and unassuming demeanor — is Reality Winner (a laughably ironic name, all things considered). Tina Satter’s fascinating directorial debut takes her startling indiscretion and spins it into something of a horror movie about the repercussions of Doing The Right Thing in the face of the United States’ surveillance system: a David and Goliath story where the stronger power slings stones squarely back in the underdog’s face. Not only is “Reality” inventively mounted and extraordinarily tense, but across 85 taut minutes, it proves something we already knew deep down: that Sydney Sweeney is the real deal.
Adapted from her own off-Broadway play “Is This A Room,” the...
Foley partner Lisa Noller, Chair of the Firm’s Litigation Department, will be speaking at the American Bar Association’s Qui Tam & Civil False Claims and Healthcare Fraud Institute in Washingt...