She screams at the television that Tony Blair is lying about weapons of mass destruction, that there’s no credible links between Saddam and Al Qaeda, and you can see why she had to do what she did – she was the only one who could. In the lead role, Knightley gives an invigorated and highly empathetic performance, continuing to prove she has really matured in her acting ability, as demonstrated in last year’s overlooked ‘Colette’. Hood has also enlisted an exquisite cast of British thespians to bring the recent events to life. It's captivating and has a number of engaging layers as well as being far more comprehensible and accessible than its counterparts can be. However thanks to an excellent screenplay from Gregory and Sara Bernstein alongside Gavin Hood (who’s had a fascinating career ranging from ‘Tsotsi’ and ‘Eye in the Sky’ to ‘Ender’s Game’ and ‘X-Men Origins: Wolverine’), and an aptly claustrophobic yet spritely paced manner of direction from Hood, it stands its ground as an accomplished political thriller. On the outset, ‘Official Secrets’ would appear to be playing off the success of ‘Spotlight’. The memo sought information on how to potentially blackmail United Nations diplomats to vote in favour of an invasion of Iraq. Gun, on the other hand, is marched into a hair-raising inquisition at GCHQ, and then into a police station, and then informed that she can’t reveal details about her work to her defending counsel, and then finds that her Turkish asylum-seeker husband, Yasar ( Adam Bakri), has been mysteriously shuffled up the list for imminent deportation.Thanks to its excellent cast and tight screenplay, Official Secrets elevates itself above the label of just another 'Spotlight'īased on a true story that occurred in the years following 9/11, ‘Official Secrets’ chronicles the events that follow GCHQ employee Katharine Teresa Gun (Keira Knightley) leaking a top secret memo exposing an illegal spying operation by the United States of America. It is his honest lust for a good story that causes him to publish.īut these journalists’ lives are basically comfortable. Conleth Hill plays the Observer’s editor Roger Alton who, despite his pro-government line, comes out of this rather well. Rhys Ifans plays renowned reporter Ed Vulliamy as a passionately angry critic of the government Matt Smith plays Martin Bright – who wrote the original story – and Hanako Footman plays young journalist Nicole Mowbray, whose chaotic, innocent mistake in transcribing the email, replacing its American spellings with British ones, caused the story to be initially rubbished by online conspiracists in the US. The working life of the Observer is boisterously and affectionately represented. Gun is still young enough not to have made an ineradicable career investment in GCHQ or formed loyalty links to its upper reaches. Most importantly of all, she is young – like Edward Snowden, or Chelsea Manning, or Sarah Tisdall, jailed in 1984 for revealing details about American cruise missiles in Britain. She has an idealism, work ethic and professionalism that made her an excellent intelligence operative in the first place, and yet it is precisely these things that made her rebel. Keira Knightley gives a focused, plausible and sympathetic performance as Gun, and the film shows that she is in many ways the classic whistleblower. Gun herself was prosecuted under the Official Secrets Act. The Observer’s front page on 2 March 2003.Īlthough it did not stop the war, as Gun dreamed of doing, it played an important part in turning press and public opinion.
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