(from left) Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe...

(from left) Megan Twohey (Carey Mulligan) and Jodi Kantor (Zoe Kazan) in "She Said." Credit: Universal Pictures/JoJo Whilden

PLOT Two reporters attempt to uncover years of sexual abuse by the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein.

CAST Carey Mulligan, Zoe Kazan, Ashley Judd

RATED R (adult themes and language)

LENGTH 2:09

WHERE Area theaters

BOTTOM LINE A solid dramatization of the reporting that launched the #MeToo era and changed workplaces around the world.

If it seems like barely a day goes by without news of a powerful man brought down by his own sexual misconduct, Maria Schrader’s “She Said” will remind you that things were not always thus. The film begins in 2016, when headlines about alleged sexual harassment by presidential candidate Donald Trump seemed to fall on deaf ears and Fox News megastar Bill O’Reilly could dismiss such stories as the product of “feminist” bias. As for the movie producer Harvey Weinstein — the mostly unseen but ever-present villain of this movie — his sexual abuses had been an open secret in Hollywood for years.

“She Said” is a scrupulous and sensitive retelling of the reporting by New York Times staffers Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey (the screenplay is based on their bestselling book) that exposed Weinstein and led to his 23-year-prison sentence. “She Said” will inevitably be compared to the 1976 Watergate drama “All the President’s Men,” but Kantor and Twohey faced something even bigger than a White House conspiracy: A world in which women who spoke out against their abusers were ignored, dismissed or silenced.

“She Said” features fine, crisp performances from Zoe Kazan as Kantor and Carey Mulligan as Twohey. Together, the two track down numerous women with eerily similar stories of Weinstein: flirtation, intimidation and, finally, violation. Kantor and Twohey are both mothers, which is why the story feels so important: “If that can happen to Hollywood actresses,” Kantor says, “who else could it be happening to?” At the Times’ headquarters, levelheaded guidance comes from Patricia Clarkson as assistant managing editor Rebecca Corbett and a wonderfully unflappable Andre Braugher as executive editor Dean Baquet.

Schrader and screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz avoid restaging Weinstein’s various hotel-room assaults, preferring to let the accusers speak for themselves. They’re played by a handful of excellent actors, including Jennifer Ehle and Angela Yeoh, though the most haunting is Samantha Morton as Zelda Perkins, a onetime employee at Weinstein’s famed Miramax studio who reveals that her nondisclosure agreement restricted her from speaking even to a therapist about her experience. Ashley Judd, who bravely allowed herself to be named in the Times’ bombshell story on Weinstein, plays herself in a brief but symbolically resonant turn.

“She Said” is the rare journalism drama that avoids glamorizing the profession, but it pays a price: Because nearly every crucial scene takes place in a restaurant, at a laptop or in a conference room, the movie can feel a little static. Still, its story is no less powerful for it. “She Said” seems destined to become a classroom staple, a first stop for the future generations that Kantor and Twohey kept so closely in mind.

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