Official Secrets

Engrossing! 'Official Secrets' is terrific.

How about that cast list? So many recognizable (or recognisable, for those using spell check...) faces appear throughout. Keira Knightley's performance is excellent, I am a fan of her from other things (small matter of 'Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl' being literally my favourite movie) but I haven't actually seen enough of her other work; yet to see a bad showing from her though.

Ralph Fiennes and Matt Smith are just two of the other noteworthy names attached, that's without mentioning the likes of Rhys Ifans and Conleth Hill, among others. Given that, it comes as zero surprise for me to say that the acting in this movie is absolutely top, top notch.

The 112 minute run time goes by in the blink of an eye, for a film without any major action or flashy set pieces it does a cracking job at keeping events onscreen feeling fresh. It really is expertly crafted together, the pacing is on point. The plot is one I was hooked on - I knew the general gist of the heinous real life events, just without knowing all the exact details.

This is the third Gavin Hood-directed flick I've seen. I found 'X-Men Origins: Wolverine' to be solid, but I mainly know of him from the very good 'Tsotsi'. Like that aforementioned picture, I'd undoubtedly recommend this.

Wow, great movie with a very interesting story and Keira Knightley was brilliant as always.

Great movie. Very well produced and played. This is a very important topic. There is so much BS going on past, prestent and, most likely, future. And people need to be reminded. Even if it falls on deaf ears with the majority.

Great movie about Katherine Gun, and her decision to leak UK government’s top secret infos regarding the Iraq war. Based on a true story. Would recommend it.

I liked this theiller about how an employee of the UK leaks a document about the government trying to get involved in an illegal war. Keira Knightley holds this movie with a good acting. I liked the production values and music, I think they create a good athmosphere for the film. Maybe it lacks the good old Hollywood drama, but I enjoyed it. What I did not like was perhaps that it only is about the leak and trial, not the consequences of this and we only know about them as final text explanation.

Official Secrets (2019)
Dir: Gavin Hood

Official Secrets is a somewhat political drama mystery set in 2003 where a British intelligence specialist leaks top secret information to the press regarding the Iraq war.

Personally i'm not a huge fan of films that are outright political dramas like this one, about the press and the media. Although I did quite enjoy this one, despite it falling flat quite a few times. This film does an incredibly good job of telling the story how it should be told, packed full of relevant information of the deception throughout the government. Although, I found that it struggled to get an actual emotional response from me personally. This film didn't really make me feel anything, I was just kind of 'meh' when the film ended. Official Secrets was definitely gripping, as we see the main character fighting with her own morals whilst receiving the fallout from her actions in the government, and with this being based on real events it can sometimes be quite difficult to pull off.

I'd say my only serious flaw with this film was Keira Knightley. I don't have anything against her but all of her characters just feel the same to me, and there's no real distinguishable characteristics for any of her characters to me. I feel as though you could just swap and change her characters from film to film and they'd still be the same character.

Overall this film was pretty good, but personally it's not one that I would choose to rewatch as it seems once you've seen this film, there's nothing particularly gripping or prominent enough to make you watch to come back for more. I'd definitely recommend this film to anyone with an interest in political drama, or more specifically the British government in the early 00s.

Gripping all of the way through. It's no secret that the UK and US governments lied about weapons of mass destruction, but the film brought to light some details that I hadn't known before. A good film, and one that is quite topical, as the governments who rule our countries continue to lie and deceive us.

It was after 9/11 and during the run up to the Iraq invasion that I started to pay a LOT more attention to politics than I previously had. There were a lot of things I missed during that time and the story of Katharine Gun was one I didn't remember a lot about, so it was great to go back and revisit this story. It's also quite relevant to today's political landscape and shows some contrast (and stark similarity) between the relationship between gov't and media then and today. All three of the leads were quite good, even if they were only playing slightly modified versions of themselves. For a political drama, I did like that they gave some time to focus on Gun, her personal life, and the toll her actions were taking. Gavin Hood has come a long way from the trash heap that was X-Men Origins: Wolverine, so kudos to him for the progress he's made.

**I'm a fan if you can keep me as engaged as any of the Fury Road action sequences.**
Official secrets comes under the 'whistleblowing' genre whose stalwarts include movies like All the president's men and Network. There have also been a few in recent times like The Post and Spotlight. But what makes this stand out is the amount of time we spend on the protagonist's personal life. Not to take away anything from these movies, (they might even lessen if they try something like this) but it was important here that we devoted our focus into the character's personal struggles because only then would we know how hard the decisions that she made were and the things that were at stake for her when she chose this for herself. That for me elevated the movie to a whole new level.

I want Gavin Hood to make political biopics forever. It feels so organic and truthful to its cause, especially with those sets/locations. All while the cast, acting and script dread you into a well-entertained corner. The 'public' has so much power but it's used so painfully. The 'people' and 'patriots', don't know how dangerously blind they follow wrath and greed by race, gender, ethnicity, sex, etc. as a distraction to give spoilt corruption what it wants. Set in 2003, yet timeless to what we see on the 'news' today. It makes my head hurt, knowing this is 1 in a billion. Katharine Gun is what an icon should be.