Ink

The music churns, the camera flies, flashes of the past and the future intrude alongside visions of events that may or may not be real. We feel the excitement of these characters, but we also sense that they’re gleefully opening the gates to hell.

Ink works as both a fictionalized snapshot of a lost world and a forensic exploration of what happens when you give the people what they want, instead of what they don’t know they want. It’s a movie about the beginning of an end, brought about by enterprising men who just wanted to sell papers. So thrilled by the lede they were writing, they gave zero forethought to the kicker.

The dialogue is delicious throughout, with much of it lifted directly from the source material. In addition, the film is directed and edited in thrilling, urgent style, with scenes that feel like they are flying off the frequently featured printing presses.

Flashbacks and flash forwards abound, archive headlines pulse through the dizzying frames and everywhere there’s a sense that Graham’s talky source material is being hammered into vibrant life by a director whose default setting is adrenaline overdose.

A rip-roaring adaptation of James Graham’s award-winning play.

Ink inhabits a space that is both formulaic and inventive when it comes to storytelling

Attempts to be like The Social Network also extend to the way in which Ink's story is told. There’s plenty of snappy dialogue, quick conversations, and montages that show The Sun growing in popularity. In that regard, it’s very similar to what Fincher’s film did, except he made all of these sequences count for something as the story moved towards its ultimate conclusion regarding Zuckerberg. Meanwhile, Ink’s conclusion falls completely flat – so much so that one wonders what Danny Boyle was truly going for when he made this film.