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.

Film Review - Angel Has Fallen (15)

We're lions - and there ain't nothin' gonna change that.

Angel Has Fallen completes one of the more unlikely modern cinema trilogies. In 2013 it was Olympus, i.e. the White House, that did the falling, as Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler) rescued the US President from the clutches of kidnapping terrorists. Then in 2016 it was the turn of London to collapse, our hero once again salvaging the day as the English capital's most photogenic landmarks tumbled around the ears of assembled world leaders in a CGI firestorm. Now it's Banning himself who's destined for a fall, as he protects a new leader of the free world in President Trumbull (Morgan Freeman). It should be an old and tired rehash and I was bracing myself for such. But you know what? It's not a bad evening at the cinema - at all.

This new story finds Banning a beaten-down mess from all the injuries he's sustained on previous adventures. Old Service pal Wade Jennings (Danny Huston) is trying to get him back on track with some off-the-record training, while neither Mike's wife or indeed his President know that he's popping pain-killers like candy. It all comes to a head when he leads operations on a Presidential fishing trip that goes very wrong indeed. A powerful force - possibly the Russian government - wants the President dead, and are organised enough to make Banning take the fall for it. But if they think he'll roll over easily, hey - they're reckoning with the wrong guy.

This is a potboiler action thriller that knows its limitations and strengths, and which plays to the latter. Rather than up the ante following the 2016 terrorist blitzing of London, it keeps the mayhem relatively restrained, although a lethal drone strike early on demonstrates that proceedings are going to be both high-tech and bloody. The screenplay draws out the political elements convincingly enough, keeping things taut and fast-paced, and focusing at all times on its central character's developing plight.

It's all helmed by Ric Roman Waugh, one of those stuntmen-turned-directors, who deals well enough with the gritty set-pieces, even if he resorts a little too much to edgy hand-held shots and fast editing. David Buckley provides a pumping, drum-heavy soundtrack, there's a steely-gray colour palette to match and even if the plot resorts to familiar thriller tropes (you'll easily guess which characters aren't to be trusted), its comparative groundedness keeps you involved.

The other department in which the movie betters its predecessors is in the depth of casting. Butler's tough-guy lead has added vulnerability to make him more relatable and Freeman is - well - President-you-wish. But there's also Jada Pinkett Smith as a brisk and determined FBI agent, Tim Blake Nelson as the morally ambiguous Vice President and John Wick's Lance Reddick as a high-ranking Secret Service bodyguard. And Huston is having a lot of fun as Mike's former comrade-in-arms. But most welcome of all is Nick Nolte - crustier and more knobbly than ever, with a vocal register that could grate cheese. Who he plays I'll keep secret, but his interations with Butler in the Appalachian woods are choice, taking the film to a whole other funnier and better level.

There's not a lot of critical love out there for Has Fallen 3, with many dismissing it the flogging of a B-movie franchise. I think it's better than that - a nuts-and-bolts thriller for sure, but with fewer preposterous explosions than before and a greater sense of fun. Maybe Harrison Ford did it better twenty-five years ago, but Gerard Butler has a battered charm of his own, and this time around - with such good company - it really works.

Gut Reaction: Consistently invovled, some unexpectedly big laughs halfway through and even a little bit moved at the end.

Memorable Moment: Danger! Forest fires!

Ed's Verdict: 6.5/10. An unremarkable but solid piece of action entertainment, helped out by a battery of good performances, decent set-pieces and some welcome humour.

Film Review - Widows (15)

Our husbands aren't coming back. We're on our own.

UK Filmic Forays readers of a certain age will remember Widows, the hard-boiled '80s TV crime drama that Lynda La Plante adapted from her own novel. Director Steve McQueen certainly recalls it; those gutsy female leads remained with him for three decades, so that this new version of the story has become his surprising follow-up to 12 Years a Slave. He shrewdly brought Gone Girl/Sharp Objects writer Gillian Flynn on board too, to create the screenplay. Their collaboration - like you might have anticipated - has forged a riveting crime thriller with added depth and contemporary relevance.

The big-screen Widows relocates to modern-day Chicago and plunges us straight into the blood and bullets of a heist gone terribly wrong. It's one from which none of the thieves will survive. Veronica Rawlings, wife of the criminal group's leader, is still reeling from the loss of her husband (a cameoing Liam Neeson), when she discovers a second harsh truth. The robbers have stolen from local gangster-turned-politician Jamal Manning, and he's demanding that the debt be paid in full by those they left behind. Fast running out of time, Veronica (Viola Davis) enlists the aid of two more women widowed by the heist and pitches a daring idea - they will work through the plans for the next robbery their late husbands had lined up and carry it out themselves. 

Widows is a heist movie the way HBO's The Wire was a crime drama, i.e. it's that and vastly more. The genius begins with Flynn's screen-writing - she tells the story of a complex heist with smart economy, while connecting the women's narrative to that of warring local politicians. Robert Duvall and Colin Farrell play two generations of a mayoral dynasty, whose reign is being challenged by the widows' nemesis Manning (Brian Tyree Henry). Veronica and co are snared somewhere in between. The minor miracle is that all these characters and their stories have room to expand, achieving a degree of complexity within the tightly plotted framework. 

Add to that McQueen's hold on the story - constantly challenging our expectations, with every shot crafted to deepen appreciation of character and location. Under his steely gaze Chicago itself comes into sharp focus with its ethnic and financial divides. But he also knows how to tell a good crime story, making the most of all the surprises in Flynn's devious script. And he lets the camera linger on the faces of his actors, capturing every flicker of emotion as events push towards their crisis.

There are no off-note performances here, just excellent ones. Eighty-eight-year-old Robert Duvall has power and ferocity as veteran politician Tom Mulligan, while Daniel Kaluuya (so amiable in Get Out) is properly scary as Jamal's psychopathic brother.

Farrell and Henry impress too, but as with the '80s TV show, this is all about the women. Davis, who carved out that Best Supporting Oscar in Fences, is a powerhouse here as the formidable Veronica. She's hurting, scared and vulnerable, but she also radiates strength as the widows' rallying point. Michelle Rodriguez tempers her usual toughness as the one mother in the group, while Cynthia Erivo (sensational in Bad Times at the El Royale) has bags of attitude as the one non-widow enlisted to help them. And rounding out the team is The Night Manager's Elizabeth Debicki, whose journey as serial-victim Alice is perhaps the most striking of the movie. Watching these gals pick up where their husbands left off is nothing short of enthralling.

As a heist story Widows doesn't let down - the central set-piece is as taut (fuelled by Hans Zimmer's score) as you might hope. But it's also a fascinating study of social conflict along lines of gender, race and economics. And at its heart is the bond of necessity between these four desperate, disparate female anti-heroes. They're not good-girls, but you'll come to see things from their viewpoint, and by the end you'll be rooting for them every hard-fought, potentially disastrous step of the way.

Gut Reaction: Locked in from the heart-pounding opening scenes, then regularly blind-sided - by unexpected plot curves and great moments of performances.

Where Are the Women?: See the film's title. Also its amazing writer. And look out for Jacki Weaver's amazing cameo as Alice's mother.

Ed's Verdict: 9/10. Intelligent multi-layered movie-making that demands to be seen again. The lesson? That with the right people doing it, a riveting genre flick and a work of art can be one and the same thing.