Review: Official Secrets

This review contains only trailer-level spoilers
​Part “Spotlight”, part “Red Joan”, this film is about principles, dilemmas, and how one person’s action can have great consequences.

"Official Secrets" (2019), directed by Gavin Hood, tells the true story of GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun (Keira Knightly). GCHQ employees are asked to participate in an illegal operation by the NSA. They want to sway the UN Security Council vote in favour of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Katharine leaks this information and is arrested for breaching the Official Secrets Act. 

This film ticks two big boxes for me. Firstly that it is about a dilemma, and secondly it is led by a woman trying to choose what is right.

When you offer a dilemma with real consequences you really dig into the meat of a character and find out about the strength of conviction. Plus the audience is put into their shoes.

Would you leak the memo if you thought it was right?
Would you plead guilty to receive a lighter sentence or would you risk losing everything and push on with the case to try to expose enormous wrongdoing?
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Knightly played Gun with just the right amount of principle and doubt. It wasn’t an easy choice to make, she was wracked with guilt and fear. 

Although the facts shown in the film are public knowledge, I don’t think many would remember the full details even if they were old enough to have seen it on the news 16 years ago.
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But the film handled that well, providing the names and positions of key people on screen and explaining who they were. News footage from the time also helped put the whole thing in context. On a couple of occasions it got a bit expositiony but on the whole I felt I was neither spoon fed or made to feel like an idiot for not remembering. 

Some of the more minor side characters weren’t acted especially convincingly and I wasn’t particularly holding my breath in anticipation.

​Nonetheless it is an important film about taking a stand while acknowledging the great risk of doing so. The people come before any government and they deserve to know the truth.