Recensioni di Metacritic

Sweeney's take on Winner reflects the emotional whirlwind the young woman went through after FBI agents showed up in her footsteps. Thanks to her, Reality is a mesmerizing experience that doesn’t hold any punches and will shake any viewer to their core.

This, the film says, is what it really feels like to be on the receiving end of the law in a case like this: a calm, professional, technocratic but relentless display of overwhelming power.

Inching towards its grand reveal through surreally awkward conversation, “Reality” is gripping and deceptively layered, delineating both the FBI’s queasily ingenious interrogation tactics and Sweeney’s extraordinary range.

Satter shows unfaltering command of the medium for a first-time film director, notably in her penetrating use of the closeup, which makes the steadily exposed raw nerves of Sydney Sweeney’s remarkable performance in the title role all the more disturbing to witness.

Reality can be stranger than fiction, but “Reality” fuses the two to become stranger, and more riveting, still.

Ultimately, it’s Sweeney’s show, and she excels in locating small crannies of tacit detail within these offhanded lines.

Satter’s fascinating film moves away from the rhythms of political thriller and into the eerie realm of the uncanny.

Reality transcends staginess as a strikingly well-realised piece of filmmaking, using judicious sound design and expressive lighting to gain a surreally vivid edge.

Sweeney is excellent as the whistleblower who slowly but surely realises the game is up and creeps from poised confidence to frightened, tearful regret. Hamilton and Davis are also very believable as agents in complete control.

Sweeney never lets you forget that Reality Leigh Winner was just a young woman who believed she needed to act, which is why the picture works so well: her ordinariness makes her seem all the more helpless, and also more relatable. She could be any of us.