Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White) is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, seeking an inside source at Facebook for an article on the lingering and long-term effects that the proliferation of social media has had on our society. He finds that source in Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), an engineer on the dissolved civil integrity team responsible for creating internal guardrails for the platform. In its place, Mark Zuckerberg (Jeremy Strong) pivoted the company to focus instead on MSI – Meaningful Social Interaction – a metric that was designed to keep audiences engaged and send posts viral, even if those posts were inflammatory and false.

Aaron Sorkin returns to pen The Social Reckoning, the second chapter of the ongoing Facebook story, this time also taking over directorial duties from David Fincher, who helmed The Social Network (2010). The 112-minute film had a world premiere in London ahead of its 2,200-screen domestic release after a summer of handwringing given Fincher’s absence from the project along with Jesse Eisenberg opting not to reprise his role as the reptilian tech billionaire. Sony Pictures, to their credit, have been trying to market the film as its own independent entity separate from The Social Network, and while it can stand on its own merits, the film is rather toothless despite the subject matter and feels more like a slightly above-average straight-to-Netflix film instead of the prestige title that it nevertheless is reaching towards given its pedigree.

Leading the film is the duo of White and Madison, both of whom are asked to mute their charisma and have their characters dig in their heels to the two or three little character quirks which Sorkin’s script provides them with. The result is a wash-rinse-repeat of these two characters clashing, finding a flash of synergy, and then repelling away from each other while the script hops over to Zuckerberg being coached by Raya (Wunmi Mosaku) ahead of his congressional hearing; an equally repetitively structured arc, albeit one that is more engaging to watch. Sorkin tries to vary this by structuring his script in three chapters and then oscillating between different timelines within those chapters. From a bird’s-eye view, the narrative structure is incredibly similar to A Few Good Men (1992), but only if the “you can’t handle the truth” court-martial third-act capper was all yadda yadda’ed away; the story is not there on the page for one, Rob Reiner‘s directorial prowess is missing, and White and Madison’s floating-through-life performance flickers out next to our memories of Tom Cruise and Demi Moore as the leading pair in a Sorkin investigative script. Simply, this is the wrong angle to take in expanding on the real-life Facebook saga, because to present the story purely linearly would make it rather impenetrable given the lack of excitement or energy in the performances, but the fracturing of the narrative really seems like Sorkin jangling the keys to distract audiences from the rather thin nature of the story he is looking to tell.

The craft behind The Social Reckoning is all, like the script and like the performances, perfectly serviceable, if not a hair above, but it is all being filtered through Sorkin’s elementary directorial style that it does not allow these elements to support and elevate in the way the work from these crews is meant to do. Alan Baumgarten’s editing is probably the standout of all the below-the-line disciplines, as he does manage to find momentum somewhere in Sorkin’s monolithic pages and singular directorial style to help move the story along with an idea of urgency about it. Alexandre Desplat‘s score is menacingly whimsical, always tinkering off in the background of the scenes to help add some texture, but it is hardly the disruptive tones of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. Rooted in a more traditional style, it ends up blunting the edge of the drama into something that goes down a little too easily, like a Tom Hanks caper instead of a searing indictment of the state of social media and how it has affected our world. What further shrinks this story down is that it takes place almost entirely indoors and with only a few uninspired locations, giving the film the mark of a Covid era production even though it was filmed well after the restrictions had been lifted.

The high water mark for the film comes in Strong’s performance, and even though he makes for a muted villain compared to Jack Nicholson‘s Col. Jessup to continue the A Few Good Men overlay, he is at least allowed the most latitude of the core trio to build an actual character and show emotion beyond just bubbling social awkwardness, which is impressive given that the entire performance is based around being so socially removed from the situation that it comes off as maleficent. There are choices being made, albeit extreme ones, but finally an actor that is allowed to lean into the absurdity of the entire situation, which is about all we as an audience have to invest in since Sorkin’s script tiptoes around any real engagement with the material as if he were writing scared of upsetting the very beast he is looking to expose. It is a sanitized, corporate-approved analysis of the events chronicled in the Journal’s series of so-called “Facebook Files,” which, while not allowing the film to become a true platform for Facebook’s media talking points, certainly does not keep Zuckerberg, his company, nor their practices on the hook to squirm about. Strong does dip back into the well he drew from when portraying Roy Cohn in Ali Abbasi‘s The Apprentice (2024), a similarly reprehensible cartoon evil personified, but here, without the nuance of Gabriel Sherman‘s script, Strong’s Zuckerberg comes off more like a caricature than a true person which is still better then blending into the set dressing as his costars do. While he has a mission – one that is diametrically opposed to that of Frances’ – we enter the film with our outside knowledge and opinions about Zuckerberg. Sorkin does little to challenge them in any way, so Strong’s performance becomes something we can all join Sorkin up on his soapbox and punch down on in unison instead of seeing him as the hero in his own story as Eisenberg’s snot-nosed rendition was.

Sorkin is hung up on connecting Facebook to the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol building while sidelining the studies showing the detrimental effects of Facebook and its platforms on its teenage users. Framing the film around this damning fact while letting the radicalization plotline play out in the ancillary would have given the entire film a more human element, which it is sorely missing; perhaps it will be dissected in a seemingly inevitable third installment, but given the slide in acuity of this installment and that Mark Zuckerberg’s framing of himself as a white knight and bastion of online safety for teens after a $17 billion whipping from 52 Attorneys General, one can only imagine that any potential film would fall in line and follow suit.

The Social Reckoning is fine, with its biggest flaw being that it is the follow-up to one of the most beloved techno-thrillers of the 21st century despite the filmmakers trying to both stand on its shoulders and distance itself from the title. While it does feel very different from its spiritual predecessor, as Sorkin and the studio claim it is, the title nevertheless betrays that angle, and comparisons between the two titles are inevitable. Even without that context, the film is, as said, simply fine. It does not seek to challenge the viewer or put its subject matter under any real scrutiny. Sorkin’s skill at filling up the page with sharp dialogue is present at always, but in this latest outing and under his own direction, we are offered a peek behind the emerald curtain to see that this wordsmithing wizard is little more than just a man in over his head. While far less dangerous to society than the dark evolution of Facebook – not that the origins of the website were all that altruistic – it is in Sorkin’s obsessive shepherding of this story, in the same way that Zuckerberg’s obsessive shepherding of his platform, that they have become their own respective downfalls. Without listening to those around him and leaning on the skills of others, neither product is one that audiences will tend to enjoy.