I got to a preview screening courtesy of the Times. As most of the plot is a matter of public knowledge, it doesn't make sense to avoid spoilers.
This is a dramatic retelling of the story of Katharine Gun, the GCHQ operative who leaked the request by the US to spy on the delegates of the UN Security Council in the run up to voting on permitting war on Iraq. It should be a biography but in a story this complex, a lot of shortcuts and imagined meetings must have happened.
There were lots of excerpts from media footage of Bush and Blair. To take you back into the turn of the millenium. I thought this was a slickly told story, well edited but also sadly flawed. I had many questions frustratingly unanswered. The film itself determined really to look at the legitimacy of the war v the need to disclose state secrets. In essence, the means for the latter attempting to defeat the ends of the former.
The strength of the film is in several areas. What is does exceptionally well is explain very complex situations succinctly. The conflict in disclosing top secret information was set out as the duty to the government v the duty to the country in the police interrogation. The Iraq war as the sheer human cost of removing a tyrants regime as Katharine and her husband argued.
Even the legal argument was easy to grasp as it was layered slowly from a passing thought to the defence which led to charges being dropped. Ralph Fiennes stole every scene with understated precision in his barrister role.
The flaw is that the film couldn't quite work out if it was a drama in the newsroom, the courtroom, the bedroom or the police interview room. It was all too neatly self contained stopping each bit from resolving.
It can't have been this neatly divisible in realtiy. I struggled to understand why the film didn't bother for example to reflect on GCHQs water cooler moment as the charges were dropped in court. Instead, the film abruptly stopped at the moment a relieved Katharine said she would do it again, betraying secrets.
And here is the issue with this. Keira Knightly was cast as the lead. But what stole the show was her makeup artist. As the tension started to wear on her, Keira looked visibly worn emotionally. But in general there was a lot of stoney faces from the police (special branch?), to work colleagues, to Ralph fiennes as lawyer. And this was despite there being a lot of conflict. The conflicts were contained largely between Katherine and her husband.
The actual flashpoint was between Ken McDonald and Ralph Fiennes Ben Emmerson QC somewhere on the coast away from London. And even then the film left unexplained why there was such a vicious underlying antagonism between the two. It did this a lot. Some kind of shadowy internal affairs at GCHQ applying pressure on colleagues was really the last straw for Katherine? There had to be more but it was all left unsaid.
The newsroom bits were probably the best bits. The over the top acting as everyone was losing their head in the Observer. The Washington correspondent was hammy but entertaining. Yvonne Ridley meeting the journalist to handover the leak was a well done moment building up tension. a lot of material was drawn upon
The most profound bit was the discussion around censorship on national security grounds. The film explored a lot but here is the flaw, it just concluded the newsroom story around two thirds of the way in. The story then made way for the final act in the courtroom. Where again, it just got stuffy if not farcical as "the best lawyer" the DPP had opted not to prosecute at trial. Why even go to trial? The plot itself was that it would have meant disclosing that the legal advice at the time was that the UK going to war in Iraq was illegal. Was it?
It just made a well produced film unsatisfying. A lot of thought had gone into very subtly told scenes. For example, even the lighting in gchq offices and the police rooms seemed oppressive. The dress sense of the detectives was twee as if they knew they didn't belong to the world of spooks. And that's the problem with the story, it just jars as if it's out of place somehow.
This is a dramatic retelling of the story of Katharine Gun, the GCHQ operative who leaked the request by the US to spy on the delegates of the UN Security Council in the run up to voting on permitting war on Iraq. It should be a biography but in a story this complex, a lot of shortcuts and imagined meetings must have happened.
There were lots of excerpts from media footage of Bush and Blair. To take you back into the turn of the millenium. I thought this was a slickly told story, well edited but also sadly flawed. I had many questions frustratingly unanswered. The film itself determined really to look at the legitimacy of the war v the need to disclose state secrets. In essence, the means for the latter attempting to defeat the ends of the former.
The strength of the film is in several areas. What is does exceptionally well is explain very complex situations succinctly. The conflict in disclosing top secret information was set out as the duty to the government v the duty to the country in the police interrogation. The Iraq war as the sheer human cost of removing a tyrants regime as Katharine and her husband argued.
Even the legal argument was easy to grasp as it was layered slowly from a passing thought to the defence which led to charges being dropped. Ralph Fiennes stole every scene with understated precision in his barrister role.
The flaw is that the film couldn't quite work out if it was a drama in the newsroom, the courtroom, the bedroom or the police interview room. It was all too neatly self contained stopping each bit from resolving.
It can't have been this neatly divisible in realtiy. I struggled to understand why the film didn't bother for example to reflect on GCHQs water cooler moment as the charges were dropped in court. Instead, the film abruptly stopped at the moment a relieved Katharine said she would do it again, betraying secrets.
And here is the issue with this. Keira Knightly was cast as the lead. But what stole the show was her makeup artist. As the tension started to wear on her, Keira looked visibly worn emotionally. But in general there was a lot of stoney faces from the police (special branch?), to work colleagues, to Ralph fiennes as lawyer. And this was despite there being a lot of conflict. The conflicts were contained largely between Katherine and her husband.
The actual flashpoint was between Ken McDonald and Ralph Fiennes Ben Emmerson QC somewhere on the coast away from London. And even then the film left unexplained why there was such a vicious underlying antagonism between the two. It did this a lot. Some kind of shadowy internal affairs at GCHQ applying pressure on colleagues was really the last straw for Katherine? There had to be more but it was all left unsaid.
The newsroom bits were probably the best bits. The over the top acting as everyone was losing their head in the Observer. The Washington correspondent was hammy but entertaining. Yvonne Ridley meeting the journalist to handover the leak was a well done moment building up tension. a lot of material was drawn upon
The most profound bit was the discussion around censorship on national security grounds. The film explored a lot but here is the flaw, it just concluded the newsroom story around two thirds of the way in. The story then made way for the final act in the courtroom. Where again, it just got stuffy if not farcical as "the best lawyer" the DPP had opted not to prosecute at trial. Why even go to trial? The plot itself was that it would have meant disclosing that the legal advice at the time was that the UK going to war in Iraq was illegal. Was it?
It just made a well produced film unsatisfying. A lot of thought had gone into very subtly told scenes. For example, even the lighting in gchq offices and the police rooms seemed oppressive. The dress sense of the detectives was twee as if they knew they didn't belong to the world of spooks. And that's the problem with the story, it just jars as if it's out of place somehow.