These backward leaps act like cattle prods, jarring us out of the somnolence that densely talkative films can induce. We need them: However crucial and opportune in its truth-seeking and depictions of political trickery (Burns could hardly have known his film would plop into theaters alongside the impeachment hearings for President Trump), “The Report” is too often dramatically frozen, its emotions stubbornly internal. Given the near-impossible task of gluing our eyes to blank rooms and cautious conversations, the cinematographer, Eigil Bryld , mostly zooms in close and crosses his fingers.

So starved are we for sensation that when a summary of Jones’s findings is finally exposed to the light of an official hearing, the triumphal surge nearly caused me to yelp with relief. Aside from the occasional spicy performance (like Hamm’s smooth turn as Denis McDonough, Barack Obama’s chief of staff, and Ted Levine ’s slyly damning portrayal of the former C.I.A. Director John Brennan), it’s Driver who must bear the film’s considerable weight. He does so by giving Jones a mounting fury that manifests not in explosive confrontations, but in a gradually hardening resolve to protect and disseminate his findings. With Driver, there’s always a sense of something leashed, and his characters can seem to be operating on a plane above and beyond everyone else. These qualities align perfectly with Jones’s increasingly isolated and dangerous journey, yet the man beneath the mission remains frustratingly unknowable.

In his vibrant screenplays for Steven Soderbergh (like “Contagion” in 2011 and this year’s “The Laundromat”), Burns has shown he’s more than capable of zapping complicated stories to life. And where “The Report” succeeds, it’s in pointing constantly and anxiously to the importance of holding government to account. Burns has clearly thought long and hard about how to open our eyes, but maybe not enough about how to keep them that way.

The Report

Rated R for nauseating abuse and disgusting cover-ups. Running time: 1 hour 59 minutes.