The most indelible image of Mark Zuckerberg isn’t of him wearing “pervert glasses.” It’s of the fictional Mark that closes “The Social Network,” the 2010 drama about the fraught creation of Facebook. By that point, Mark has turned friends into enemies, strangers into friends and is about to become the world’s youngest self-made billionaire. Now, alone with a laptop, he sends a “friend” request to an ex who doesn’t respond. So he hits refresh on his Facebook page again and again, a perfect poor little rich boy moment that suggests all that he’s lost.
“The Social Network” won high praise and some Oscars, including one for its writer, Aaron Sorkin, who has kept busy since, working in movies, TV and the theater. Things turned out pretty well for Zuckerberg, too, whose dorm-room start-up grew into a social-media behemoth with an estimated 3 billion users. Amid defending Facebook’s influence, including on children and elections, and issuing public apologies for the company, Zuckerberg got married (take that, fictional ex-girlfriend!) and had kids. He also changed Facebook’s name to Meta and became a billionaire many times over, with an estimated net worth of around $250 billion. He has even visited the White House to meet with President Trump.
Sorkin is back on the Zuckerberg beat with his hopefully titled new movie, “The Social Reckoning,” now as both writer and director. This time the focus isn’t on beginnings, friendships or even Zuckerberg, but about how social-media platforms like Facebook have rewired our brains, endangering both bodies and the American body politic. A fictional Mark (an eerie Jeremy Strong) still looms, but largely as an avatar. The characters pumping blood into this sequel are Frances Haugen (Mikey Madison), a real Facebook employee turned whistle-blower, and Jeff Horwitz (Jeremy Allen White), The Wall Street Journal reporter whose 2021 investigative series brought to light Haugen’s revelations that the company chose “profit over safety” and was aware of the harms it was causing.
Set over several years in and around 2021, the movie traces Frances’s progression from Facebook believer to doubter and heretic. Her awakening begins when she watches a troubling video and continues at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif. It’s there — amid open-plan spaces filled with tightly shut mouths — where she works on the company’s civic integrity team and realizes something is badly amiss. That leads her to Jeff, who doesn’t have a Facebook account but can mansplain democracy and has the dog-on-a-bone, journalistic resolve that can turn tips into headline news. He’s set his sights on Facebook, which he takes on with strong editorial support (Betty Gilpin plays his boss) and, in time, the reluctant Frances.
It’s reliably satisfying to watch David take down Goliath or, at least, hurl a few pebbles in the giant’s direction. It helps if David looks the part. One of Sorkin’s smartest moves here has been to pair White and Madison, complementary screen presences whose distinctive, off-center good looks and air of unforced sincerity make them natural underdog heroes. White tends to overwork his eyes, switching on the high beam too readily, and the catches in his voice can sound rehearsed, intentionally or not. There’s not all that much to the character, but White adds texture and shading. That he can look remarkably like the love child of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman from “All the President’s Men” (1976) is a bonus.
Sorkin does better with Frances, a prickly supernerd with more brains than people skills. The character has to do a lot, and serves as both the story’s portal and the viewer’s mirror. Because Frances is relatively isolated at work (no one seems to much like her), and has a near-nonexistent personal life, she also has to come alive without the reams of Sorkin’s trademark dialogue. Madison gives Frances a searching, at times quizzical gaze that grows focused and formidable, and which notably contrasts with her character’s initial physical reserve. After work, when Frances settles into the blanketing gloom of her apartment, she tucks her body in as if folding up a tent. You see the loneliness, but also the autonomy.
Once Frances and Jeff connect, the movie turns into a talkier quasi-thriller, with hush-hush meetings, ominous threats and even some disguises. Along the way, Sorkin plays with the chronology, shuffling among years and crystallizing moments. Mark pops in now and again, sometimes in a tie and suit while being prepped by minders (enter Wunmi Mosaku) for an appearance before Congress. His forehead fringed with wee bangs, Strong plays the role with a thousand-yard stare, a face that’s often equally blank and a voice that’s so close to Zuckerberg’s I laughed when I first heard it. It’s a technically impeccable impersonation of a human being, one for whom Sorkin clearly no longer has any sympathy.
In “The Social Reckoning,” Sorkin isn’t just taking aim at social media, he is also sounding the alarm about American democracy. The alarm is undeniably sincere, but Sorkin is ringing it in a world that — despite its villains and threats, algorithmic and otherwise — finally remains as reassuringly familiar as any on an old Hollywood backlot. For all of the movie’s topicality, it brings to mind those classic films that have been baked into the American DNA, the kind in which the little people triumph and an idealist speaks passionately about democracy from the floor of the Senate without rioters swarming in. I love those films, too, even if Jimmy Stewart is dead and these days it’s billionaires like Mr. Zuckerberg who go to Washington instead.
The Social Reckoning Rated R for language and some scenes of intense violence. Running time: 1 hour 52 minutes. In theaters.
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