YMMV / The Report

• Award Snub: Annette Bening was singled out early on as a possible contender for Best Supporting Actress for her performance as Diane Feinstein, but didn't get anything beyond a Golden Globe nomination. The screenplay, too, was largely snubbed.
• Complete Monster: Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, as depicted in the film, are a pair of psychologists whose greed drives them to create and spread the brutal "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" system across the CIA. Approaching the CIA with the idea to turn their knowledge of military training and psychology into new interrogation tactics against prisoners, Mitchell and Jessen subject two captured terrorists to truly vicious, demeaning tortures, from depriving them of sleep and assaulting them to burying them alive, all to extract information and prove their "EITs" are working. Once getting approval from CIA superiors, Mitchell and Jessen propagate the usage of the EIT throughout CIA installations, leading to hundreds of detainees, even completely innocent men, being horribly tortured in the name of public security, with one prisoner even dying from the relentless torture. Revealed to actually be completely ignorant and unskilled in genuine interrogation and basing their methods on nothing but personal cruelty and ideas, Mitchell and Jessen are shown to be truly smug monsters in the movie, with their last scene showing them cheerfully laughing about how much money they got paid for assisting the CIA in nothing but hurting people, and even bragging that they kept souvenirs from torturing prisoners.
• Nightmare Fuel: The torture scenes are genuinely terrifying and disturbing.
• One-Scene Wonder: Tim Blake Nelson and Fajer Al-Kaisi only show up for a few scenes, but make big impressions as Raymond Nathan and FBI Agent Ali Soufan, two of the few government operatives we see object to the EITs.