Review: 'The Social Reckoning' digs into Facebook's dark secrets, and recasts Mark Zuckerberg as the scheming bad guy

It’s a bit of a disservice, while watching writer-director Aaron Sorkin’s “The Social Reckoning,” to think too hard about the 2010 movie “The Social Network,” which Sorkin also wrote (and David Fincher directed) — which is an odd thing to realize about a sequel.

Where that Fincher/Sorkin joint (for which Sorkin won an adapted-screenplay Oscar) unfolded as a bubbly character study of the young Mark Zuckerberg morphing from an arrogant know-it-all into a rich arrogant know-it-all, the new movie is something different. Sure, Zuckerberg is still a pivotal character — played this time by Jeremy Strong rather than Jesse Eisenberg — but the main action of this modern thriller is centered on two people trying to unravel what Facebook’s founder has wrought.

One of these people is Frances Haugen, played by “Anora” Oscar winner Mikey Madison. Haugen works in Facebook’s civil integrity unit, the group of coders tasked with reducing Facebook’s hate speech posts and political misinformation. Haugen is a true believer, and often declares how much she loves her job because of how Facebook allows people to connect with each other.

In 2019, when the movie begins, Haugen’s team gets a warning from Facebook’s top PR guy (Billy Magnussen) about a new arrival to the Bay Area: Jeff Horwitz (played by Jeremy Allen White), a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. Horwitz has been assigned to the Journal’s San Francisco office to cover Facebook. He’s not a tech guy — his editor (Betty Gilpin) mocks him for his inability to use GPS on his rental car — but he’s an investigative reporter, and Facebook isn’t just a tech firm but a force in politics and culture.

Horwitz’ approach of Haugen is tentative. They meet in a park, a neutral spot away from her Facebook colleagues (some of whom live in her apartment building). She wants to be anonymous and off the record, which makes it hard for Horwitz to pin down anything she’s telling him about how Facebook changed its mission, away from just connecting and toward getting people to watch and react — and how the most rage-inducing posts prompted the most reactions.

While Horwitz continues to work on Haugen — the pas de deus of a reporter and a source has seldom been depicted so smartly — through 2019 and the beginnings of the COVID-19 pandemic, the movie also jumps forward to 2021 and an important day for Zuckerberg. 

On this day, Facebook’s founder is suffering through a practice session for an upcoming Congressional hearing. He impatiently listens to his image consultant (Wunmi Mosaku) tell him how to speak and nod and appear human, while a former confidante (Bill Burr) sits in the back and peppers the boss with criticism — particularly about the election misinformation spewing out of the social network. Zuckerberg, here and elsewhere, insists that Facebook is blameless, comparing the site to a “cork board” that can’t control who posts whatever on it. But everything Horwitz is uncovering, and everything Haugen is feeding him, tells a more sinister version of the story.

Sorkin has a long history — “A Few Good Men,” “Moneyball,” “Steve Jobs” and on every episode of “The West Wing” he ever touched — of writing words to be spoken by the smartest people in the room, and having actors good enough and lucky enough to deliver them with conviction.

Madison chews through the tech talk about how Facebook works, and gets through that to show the sharp yet idealistic young woman who thought people would do the right thing even when the the wrong thing was more profitable. White depicts Horwitz as a smart guy realizing how much he has to learn about the tech industry. And Strong, wedging himself into the uncanny valley between Zuckerberg’s responses and human expression, captures the petty small-mindedness of a man often mistaken for one of the world’s deepest thinkers.

If “The Social Network” made a sympathetic outlaw anti-hero out of Zuckerberg, “The Social Reckoning” is an important corrective — a reminder that it’s the people breaking free of Facebook’s outsized influence who deserve our attention and praise.

——

‘The Social Reckoning’

★★★1/2

Opens Friday, October 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for language. Running time: 112 minutes.