Review: Official Secrets

Keira Knightley stars as Katharine Gun, an intelligence whistle-blower who leaks a highly sensitive NSA memo to the press revolving around the US and the UK governments (illegally) attempting to strong-arm the UN Security Council into sanctioning the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Matt Smith plays the crusading journo from The Observer who attempts to get the story published. Conleth Hill plays an editor for The Observer, with Matthew Goode and Rhys Ifans as employees of wildly differing temperament. Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma play Gun’s not-for-profit lawyers when she is put on trial for violating the title Act (Which is so incredibly bullshit that it doesn’t allow Gun to discuss very much of her case with her own lawyers!). Jeremy Northam turns up as Fiennes’ politician acquaintance who isn’t terribly happy with his friend’s involvement with Gun’s case.

 

I’m not normally overly fascinated in the second Iraq War (partly because of media saturation at the time), and I’m not a fan of secret-leakers Julian Assange or the similarly narcissistic Edward Snowden. So I was a little apprehensive heading into this 2019 film from director Gavin Hood (“Rendition”, the underrated “Ender’s Game”, the awful “Eye in the Sky”) and his co-writers Gregory (“Trial & Error”, “The Conspirator”) & Sara Bernstein (“Trial & Error”). I needn’t have worried because the very brave Katharine Gun is definitely no Assange or Snowden, and this is a case where frankly, leaking the story really wasn’t dangerous to anyone except Gun herself and her loved ones. Most people accept that there were no WMDs, the plot depicted here was clearly illegal, it was a total shitshow and certainly a black mark on Blair’s run as British PM. The Yanks were trying to pull a fast one, the Brits carried their bags for them, and the ends here didn’t justify the means. In this case the leaker comes from a point of view of genuine concern, rather than some wanky libertarian freedom of information/transparency nonsense from a couple of smug, preening, ultimately self-interested uber-nerds (one with an axe to grind, in Snowden’s case). Gun believed in the importance of the story so much she was willing to risk her own exposure for it. Fair cop, that.

 

Although at times it played like every other conspiracy/whistle-blower movie ever made, the specifics here are interesting and infuriating enough to make the journey worthwhile, even for someone like me who generally thinks you should wait a good long while before putting this sort of stuff on the screen. Following a familiar trajectory might be inevitable in this case, so I won’t tax it for that. Meanwhile, by focussing more on Knightley than on the investigative journos, the film is able to get away from comparisons to “All the President’s Men”, even if it does leave the narrative a touch out of balance. In fact, the only thing I really didn’t like was the overdone, clichéd performance by Rhys Ifans as the stock-standard shabby-looking angry journo. A shabby, crusty ‘ol cliché if ever I’ve seen one, and it’s too much performance from Ifans, who really needed to be reined in from moment one. He’s the one caricature in a film full of believable characters. Much better are Matt Smith, and especially Ralph Fiennes, Jeremy Northam, and an amusingly profane Conleth Hill. He’s playing a cliché too, but Hill reels it in just enough. The seemingly immortal Kenneth Cranham even turns up as a judge towards the end, and is always a pleasure to see. The early scenes of Knightley angrily reacting to the bullshit she’s seeing on TV are a tad hokey, but otherwise the much-maligned actress is typically terrific. She’s a bit hit and miss sometimes but when she’s on-song, Knightley’s capable of being an excellent actress. Hell, I’ll say it: If you don’t think Knightley is at least objectively solid in this, you’re unreasonably jealous of her charisma and unfairly biased. It’s the truth. And lay off Anne Hathaway while you’re at it.

 

A solid telling of an important story, and a good showcase for the acting talent of Keira Knightley. She’s backed up by a mostly terrific cast, with only a hammy Rhys Ifans disappointing. I can’t say the film really roused/outraged/surprised me quite as much as it might do for you (especially if you’ve never seen a whistle-blower film before), but this is a fine film and I’m merely old and jaded. Hell, even I got angry a time or two. You certainly won’t find a film like this with a conclusion to the court case quite like this one.

 

Rating: B-