Any director with the courage to let his actors just get on with telling an intensely important yet dry story, without any dramatic intensity, is worth paying attention to. The lack of sensationalism in the story of the torture report is what makes this work quite so well - modern history is notoriously difficult to commit well to film, and Burns is to be commended for not turning this into Vice II. It’s a story that needs to be told, the acting by Driver and Bening in particular is sensational, and Burns neatly refuses to tie it up with a bow - the truth is out there but it changed almost nothing.