I love how the young, bright-eyed reporter who tries to help the injured security guard evolves (or maybe devolves) into a reporter who is only interested in the "big scoop" while Dustin Hoffman's character becomes a more humanitarian character ("We killed him!")
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Yeah, that's what really intrigues me about this movie: the moral complexity of the characters. There's not a major character in here that you could really pin down as a good guy or bad guy; you want to cheer them one minute and boo them the next. Almost lifelike!
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I agree, I think her character is one of the most disturbing things about this film. I just watched it again yesterday, and was stunned to realize that I had misremembered about her. I thought she had started out at least as a producer, but no, she was only an INTERN (the bottom of the career ladder at a news station, pretty much relegated to fetching coffee) at the beginning of the film. They also did a great job of changing her 'look' as the story unfolds, from relaxed (definitely behind-the-scenes) clothes, hair in a bun and no makeup, to a slightly nicer professional women's suit, to a bright red suit, hair down and styled, and bright red lipstick. It's stunning and upsetting. Then the final nail in her character's innocence coffin, the way she tells Brackett not to wipe the blood off his face, chilling.
I agree hers is IMO, the most interesting character, but the film lacks depth, subtlety and consequently realism. Like a one-joke comedy, it just keeps repeating the same condemnation concerning the manipulative duplicity of the media, without offering any alternative perspective. It ultimately makes for a predictably boring film and I'm not surprised it was a critical and commercial bomb of rather epic proportions.🐭
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