Film Review - Official Secrets (15)

Someone in this building has betrayed their country.

Much as I love the spectacle of super-hero movies and the frisson of horror and the adrenalin-rush of action-fests, there's little more satisfying than settling down to a really good political thriller. I'm not talking about the all-guns-blazing type featuring Jacks Ryan or Reacher. I mean those fuelled by intense conversations in darkened rooms - where everything that's said (or not said) brims with significance and where the stakes are raised to vertiginous heights through words alone. That kind of pure intrigue is a rare commodity in modern cinema, which is what makes Official Secrets such a brooding delight.

Keira Knightley plays real-life Katharine Gun, a low-key operatative in the British GCHQ intelligence agency. In|January 2003 she made the decision to leak an email from America's National Security Agency on the proposed invasion of Iraq; the communication in question outlined an illegal operation to influence member states of the UN Security Council into appoving the war. While Gun's colleagues received the same information, it was she who felt sufficiently outraged to pass on a copy of email, thus potantially blowing the operation's cover. Her action triggered events that threatened to destroy every aspect of her life. But more than that, it fuelled a massive political controversy the repercussions of which are felt to this day.

Official Secrets immerses you in its reality right from the start, not least through the frequent use of 2003 news footage. Catherine rants at Tony Blair and George W. Bush on her TV screen like so many did, as colossal international events unfold. It all convinces totally and she feels ordinary - an intelligent but anonymous woman, whose conscience (along with fate) thrusts her into an unenviable moral conundrum. Traitor or whistleblower? It's a question for our time and the film wrestles with it in fascinating detail, helped hugely by Knightley's haunted but fervent performance. The posh girl from Pirates of the Caribbean has come into her own as an actor these past few years and here she's never been better than here.

But impressive as she is, it's not just about Katherine. This is a story that begins with espionage, before transforming into both an investigative journalism drama and legal thriller, each as compelling as the other. It's all verbal cut and thrust - wrangling over truth and lies and taking massive risks to put the brakes on a war that might very well be illegal. Acting talent runs deep - Matt Smith's driven Observer reporter and Ralph Fiennes' campaigning civil rights lawyer are two of the more prominent and compelling examples. The direction is bow-string taut, courtesy of Gavin Hood, who in 2015 brought us nail-biting drone warfare thriller Eye in the Sky. It's moody too, the tension augmented by an ominous score from Hood's long-time collaborators Paul Hepker and Mark Killian. Everything from screenplay upward is working together sweetly here and if it becomes a little bit thematically in-your-face at points, that's a minor consideration. Too much else is spot-on.

Not a bullet is fired or a bomb triggered in Official Secrets (at least not on British soil), but the implications of brutal destruction elsewhere in the world are sobering. All is thick with duplicity and double standards, and the real-life recent nature of the story makes this arguably the most engrossing and vital thriller of the year. In a world where the true nature of patriotism is a source of daily debate and division, this is an essential movie as well as a very good one - and it needs to be seen by a lot more people.

Gut Reaction: Chin-resting-on-knuckles eyes-fixed-on-every-moment gripped. Oh and I got angry.

Memorable Moment: To 'fess or not to 'fess...

Ed's Verdict: 8/10. Multiple elements knit together seamlessly to create a quietly pulse-racing and passionate drama-thriller. Seemingly out of nowhere comes a story that really, genuinely matters.