It is revealed that top university officials, including Paterno, were aware of the allegations against Sandusky for several years, possibly since 1976, but were far more interested in covering up the scandal than in putting Sandusky behind bars.
Local newspaper journalist Sara Ganim (Riley Keough) is the first to push the story that college officials knew Sandusky was a serial molester, and did nothing about it. The story leads to Sandusky's arrest, followed promptly by recriminations against Penn State officials, including the most powerful and revered of all, Joe Paterno, by then a frail 84-year-old man.
As the pressure escalates for Penn State to fire Paterno, his family debates what to do next. Those involved are his wife, Sue (Kathy Baker), his grown sons (and assistant coaches) Jay (Larry Mitchell) and Scott (Greg Grunberg), and his daughter Mary Kay (Annie Parisse). But the scandal is too big to be contained, and heads will roll.
How others will see it. Paterno was made for pay television, and as such received several respectable award nominations, such as a Primetime Emmy for Best Director and Outstanding Television Movie, and a Director's Guild nod for Best Director. It is interesting that these nominations favor Levinson over the film's three stars, Al Pacino, Kathy Baker, and Riley Keough.
The public's view of the film is more mixed. The 5K user votes at imdb.com is a decent count for a TV movie, but the user rating of 6.5 out of 10 is so-so. This has to do with its glum mood. Keough's character ultimately wins a Pulitzer, the most prestigious award in journalism, but there is no victory lap. The criminals are imprisoned, but that won't undo the damage done to possibly hundreds of children.
The "Debbie Downer" mentality handicaps the film with many viewers. There are certainly many positive reviews, but others begin with "A difficult watch", "dark and tedious", "rooting for no one."
How I felt about it. Barry Levinson has directed at least two very good movies: Bugsy and Avalon. The present movie nearly qualifies as such, thus we conclude: he should stick to single word titles.
Seriously, Levinson has also directed movies that I am not so fond of. There's Rain Man, which has Dustin Hoffman able to count how many matchsticks have spilled on the floor at a glance. There's Wag the Dog, which added a phrase to political lingo but was too cynical for its own good, politically impossible as it sounds.
But I do like Paterno. Levinson has even managed to tame Al Pacino's over-the-top tendencies, flouted since Dog Day Afternoon 45 years ago. We even like that one of Joe Paterno's sons has a big beer belly.
And we have to admit that Elvis Presley's granddaughter is a much better actor than he ever was. She never legally changed her last name to Presley, a career move many would have made. We like it that her character needs no special other to confide in. And that no attempt is made to make her look glamorous. She even looks a lot like the real Sara Ganim.
The script is credible, and the scenarios check out and feel authentic. The movie has only two truly wrong notes, when the "face" of Sandusky's victims flees down an empty school hallway chased by two homophobe bullies, and when Paterno has a nightmare about Sandusky sexually assaulting children in a swimming pool.
All that said, it is a depressing movie. As the vise tightens on JoePa following Sandusky's indictment, he has such tunnel vision ("Nebraska is 7-1!") that he is the last to realize he will never coach another game. It is the wrong way for his career to end, but it is the children's safety that matters. Penn State officials, from Joe Paterno on up, would rather look the other way than than expose the football program to disgrace. And ultimately, winning and money mean more to them than how many kids Jerry Sandusky molested. It is true that Joe Paterno reported Sandusky to his org chart superiors. But he did so in the knowledge that they would likely hush up the scandal, instead of putting Sandusky behind bars.