<p>Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s <em>Cover-Up</em>, about American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, does not turn him into a hero. It shows him as a long-running irritant to power. The film moves through his career in a clear, chronological way, with little patience for excuses. Over 117 minutes, the film moves like a filing cabinet opening and closing.</p>.<p>The film’s strength is that it is not just about reporting. It often feels like reporting itself. Poitras drops you into the work. Anonymous calls, a single name that grows into a case, and the long wait for official sources to give way. Hersh, now in his late 80s, comes across as talkative, cranky, and funny. We see the influence of I F Stone, his early years at the Associated Press, how he broke the My Lai story, and why he kept going.</p>.'Anaconda' movie review: A hiss-terical disaster.<p>Poitras keeps the film visually spare. Restored archival footage and sharp editing replace sentimentality. The story moves quickly from Vietnam and My Lai to CIA surveillance, Watergate, and the torture exposed at Abu Ghraib. It ends in the present with a familiar chill. The same language returns. The same evasions. The same deaths. Late-career controversies are noted, but they do not overwhelm the larger record.</p>.<p><em>Cover-Up</em> is gripping, but not comforting. It presents journalism as both duty and burden. The film suggests the work never truly ends. As power adapts and language shifts, someone still has to take the call and refuse to look away.</p>
<p>Laura Poitras and Mark Obenhaus’s <em>Cover-Up</em>, about American investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, does not turn him into a hero. It shows him as a long-running irritant to power. The film moves through his career in a clear, chronological way, with little patience for excuses. Over 117 minutes, the film moves like a filing cabinet opening and closing.</p>.<p>The film’s strength is that it is not just about reporting. It often feels like reporting itself. Poitras drops you into the work. Anonymous calls, a single name that grows into a case, and the long wait for official sources to give way. Hersh, now in his late 80s, comes across as talkative, cranky, and funny. We see the influence of I F Stone, his early years at the Associated Press, how he broke the My Lai story, and why he kept going.</p>.'Anaconda' movie review: A hiss-terical disaster.<p>Poitras keeps the film visually spare. Restored archival footage and sharp editing replace sentimentality. The story moves quickly from Vietnam and My Lai to CIA surveillance, Watergate, and the torture exposed at Abu Ghraib. It ends in the present with a familiar chill. The same language returns. The same evasions. The same deaths. Late-career controversies are noted, but they do not overwhelm the larger record.</p>.<p><em>Cover-Up</em> is gripping, but not comforting. It presents journalism as both duty and burden. The film suggests the work never truly ends. As power adapts and language shifts, someone still has to take the call and refuse to look away.</p>