Clichés and half-truths in Vanderbilt’s disappointing ‘Truth’

Robert Redford does not look or act much like CBS news anchor and “60 Minutes II” star Dan Rather. But that doesn’t matter much. What matters, and what’s germane to the distressing quality of “Truth,” is that Rather comes off as a saintly cardboard dullard in writer-director James Vanderbilt’s new film. Even if you don’t know what’s missing — the legendary Rather swagger — what’s there does not compensate.

Cate Blanchett tears into the role of hard-charging news producer Mary Mapes, a maligned scapegoat in the movie’s eyes. In September 2004, on the brink of George W. Bush’s re-election, Rather led the on-air charge with a Mapes-produced “60 Minutes” segment on vagaries and riddles about Bush’s Texas Air National Guard duty during the Vietnam War.

It was a hot number. But key memos cited in the report drew charges of forgery. Crucial documents were framed on air as authentic; they were not. After an on-air retraction and apology, Rather bowed out, and Mapes was fired.

But what if the story was essentially correct and accurate, squishy evidence notwithstanding? There’s a good movie to be made from the unknown knowns of “Truth.”

Blanchett’s Mapes certainly holds the screen. But here, that doesn’t matter much. Vanderbilt’s script adapts the Mapes memoir “Truth and Duty: The Press, the President, and the Privilege of Power.” But the film feels dodgy, tentative and uncertain as to how to frame its own protagonist in a complicated story of journalistic compromise.

In the coming weeks we’ll read plenty of commentaries on how “Truth” and the forthcoming “Spotlight” handle the subject of conducting expensive, time-consuming investigative journalism in the flailing, economically hobbled media. “Truth” is a story of an incendiary rush job that didn’t hold up; the unglamorous newshounds of “Spotlight,” examining the Catholic Church’s endless, enraging cover-up of sexual abuse perpetrated by its parish leaders, had the money and the patience to do their jobs well.

As Mapes assembles her news crew (Dennis Quaid, Elisabeth Moss and Topher Grace, grappling with different degrees of smugness), “Truth” becomes a story of leaked memos, followed by a fatal shortcut or two, followed by an hour’s worth of screen time devoted to regrets, crises and fallout.

The actors can only do so much. Redford does as little as possible in the name of cliché reduction, but it’s a recessive characterization from beginning to end. Blanchett compensates, compellingly, and then overcompensates.

The drama — the honest, telling details of this saga — would’ve been enough. As is, “Truth” doesn’t matter much. But we do have “Spotlight” on the horizon.