Official Secrets (2019)
Directed by Gavin Hood
The true story of British intelligence whistleblower Katharine Gun who—prior to the 2003 Iraq invasion—leaked a top-secret NSA memo exposing a joint US-UK illegal spying operation against members of the UN Security Council. The memo proposed blackmailing member states into voting for war.
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This Sundance premiere will inspire comparisons to Spotlight and The Post — not to mention The Report , which also debuted in Park City.
It shares a lot of DNA with recent awards season darlings like Spotlight and The Post but, just like those films, this is a movie that couldn’t be more timely in communicating the power and importance of legitimate, investigative journalism.
Official Secrets is akin to other stellar films of this same genre like Spotlight and All the President’s Men.
Unfortunately, while Gun’s story is certainly worth telling and this is a well-intentioned, solid film with fine work from Knightley, “Official Secrets” is too heavy-handed and drab, and falls far short of procedural thrillers such as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” and “The Post” or broadly entertaining whistleblower stories such as “Erin Brockovich.”
Coming off of the pulse-pounding military suspenser Eye in the Sky, and understandably feeling the need to distinguish his film from a stolid BBC teledrama, Hood works to thicken the intrigue of his whistleblower story with swaths of a wonky journalistic tale (think Spotlight) and a legal crusade (think On the Basis of Sex).
This is no Spotlight (2015) or The Post (2017).
Movies like Michael Mann’s “The Insider” (1999) revived the genre for the new millennium, and the lies of the Iraq War brought on a whole new wave of rueful and truthful suspense films: “Fair Game” (2010), about the Valerie Plame affair; Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” (2016); “The Post” (2017), about the Pentagon Papers in the 1960s.
But Hood frames it with the energy of journalistic thrillers like “All the President’s Men” or “The Insider,” giving us a tour through an early 2000s newsroom environment.
To date, The Insider probably represents the most compelling whistleblower story to make it to the big screen and, although the subject matter is different, Official Secrets generates in the viewer the same sense of outrage.
This is no Spotlight (2015) or The Post (2017).
Another real-life whistleblower drama, say The Post, would build dramatically until all emotions erupt in a rousing speech that sums up every argument and reveals the righteous way (think of Meryl Streep’s climactic address in that film).
Official Secrets sees Gavin Hood on seriously outstanding form, directing this insanely gripping film on par with the brilliance that was Spielberg’s The Post.
Movies like Michael Mann’s “The Insider” (1999) revived the genre for the new millennium, and the lies of the Iraq War brought on a whole new wave of rueful and truthful suspense films: “Fair Game” (2010), about the Valerie Plame affair; Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” (2016); “The Post” (2017), about the Pentagon Papers in the 1960s.
Unless you love political theater and history and the minutia of historical talking points about the beginnings of the Iraq Conflict, there isn’t enough there there for the average Joe who thinks he’s getting a low-key Red Sparrow (2018).