It's been quite some time since I watched new movie on HBO on a Saturday night, as usually I have seen them before in the cinemas. Last weekend though, this new film premiered at 8 PM but when I saw on HBO Go application, it was already available on the same day few hours before (or maybe the day before?). Anyway, I decided to watch it first in the app. OK I'll go into more details of this movie.
Brief Story Line
In the year 2003, the US government was insistent on invading Iraq with the support of United Nations using the danger of weapons for mass destruction as basis. As its ally, UK was requested to support US despite the objection from British people. When an employee of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHC) named Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley - The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, The Imitation Game etc) received confidential instruction from the US government that might change the UN's position, she felt it was an inappropriate thing.
Katharine tried to leak the information to the press, where it finally landed in the hands of The Observer reporter Martin Bright (Matt Smith - Doctor Who TV series etc). After the news was published, it was later found out that Katharine was the one who leaked this info, which made her and her husband Yasar (Adam Bakri - Omar etc) under heavy investigation.
As things became very difficult for Katharine, she finally got the help from a group of lawyers led by Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes - Doolittle, The English Patient etc) to fight against the charges she might receive due to her action. So what would happen to Katharine? You can find them all in this wonderfully acted movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Just like I predicted, this movie was filled with some excellent acting by Keira Knightley. Her facial expressions were totally amazing and in 1 moment towards the end, I thought it was her best, where she could drastically change in just few seconds. That was a piece of truly brilliant acting. I actually enjoyed this movie because of the true story element where most of the things shown were based on actual events. And obviously this was a real eye opener as well (just like most films based on true story).
Aside from Keira Knightley as the main star, there were also other actors whose performance I enjoyed like Matt Smith and Ralph Fiennes. In addition, there were few other people who were equally important even though I did not mention in the above synopsis, i.e. Matthew Goode (Downtown Abbey TV series, Chasing Liberty etc) as journalist Peter Beaumont, Rhys Ifans (The Amazing Spider-man, Notting Hill etc) as another journalist Ed Vulliamy and Indira Varma (Carnival Row TV series etc) as lawyer Shami Chakrabarti.
The movie's dramatization was done nicely to my views as it managed to give me the suspense and intrigue feel to find out what would happen next. For such film, I purposely did not want to read the actual events first as I prefer not to know the ending. Obviously it would not work if I already have knowledge of the events, but since I did not have such privilege, the movie became more exciting to me personally.
Sometimes a film that was based on true story would tend to be overdramatized. However, I do not know why but this particular movie did not have that feel. Somehow I felt that was what really happened then. Oh there was a brief moment where the real Katharine Gun was shown, which rather surprised me since Keira's looks did not resemble her at all. But then again, I believe her choosing was done with the belief that she would have managed to perform Katharine's character perfectly (which likely it was, based on the high critical rating this film has).
Overall this was an interesting film, entertaining enough as a drama movie and sufficiently depict the actual events which happened at that time. It is not too heavy that would make it tiring and depressing to watch. I myself quite enjoy it and pretty amazed by the performance of the stars, in particular Keira Knightley, but I tend to see that this is not a commercial movie and not for everyone in general. However, for those who are fans of docudrama and/or greatly acted film, this should be satisfying.
Mike's movie moments rating: 4 out of 5 stars
PS: You could find out more information about the Official Secrets Act in the internet in case you are interested.
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