Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Cast: Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Rhys Ifans, Katherine Kelly, Indira Varma, MyAnna Buring, Kenneth Cranham, Jack Farthing, Tasmin Grieg, Hattie Morahan, Jeremy Northam, Conleith Hill, Hanako Footman, Shaun Dooley, Monica Dolan, Chris Larkin, Ray Panthaki, Clive Francis, Peter Guinness, John Heffernan, Angus Wright, Adam Bakri.
A Government not afraid of the possibility of its people rebelling against them is one that surely does not exist, for the very nature of Government is to lie through its teeth and sow discord under the banner of freedom. It is up to the individual of how much they can stomach, what lies they are willing to let stand and which ones they need to follow closely in the hope that they will be exposed, and which ones they might openly defy.
The Official Secrets Act is a catch all designed to intimidate under the guise of being part of a clandestine club, charged with keeping even the mundane out of the public eye, to even know a secret is a burden, to act upon one, to take the Government to task for allowing those in charge to attempt getting away with murder, that is heroic, and what follows unfortunately can be seen as state sponsored terrorism on the individual.
Katherine Gun is a woman of conscious, and to whom the film Official Secrets pays homage to, a true story of a moment in life where you have to choose between betraying your country, or allowing lies the chance to kill; thankfully for the British public, Katherine Gun chose to unburden her soul and tell people the truth about how the Iraq War was being waged, the prelude to strong arm tactics by America in ensuring that the U.N. resolution was passed.
The film makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the individual to make sure that the Government acts with decency, even when it feels threatened by its own, the fear it can bring, the threats of jail, of losing liberty, of deportations and intimidation, that is the way of the savage, of the rattlesnake as it shakes its tale in the hope that the mongoose steers clear.
It takes bravery to do what Katherine Gun did, it takes honesty to look at the case with the kind of forensic detail that the film provides, and with excellent performances by Matt Smith as the Observer journalist Martin Bright, Rhys Ifans as Ed Vulliamy and Ralph Fiennes as Ben Emmerson, the sense of anger that flows over the watcher is enough to start a revolution of the mind. A film that achieves this, that even makes the cinema goer think of how they would act in the same circumstances has surely achieved more in one sitting than a Government can be seen to do in one session of Parliament.
Nobody should be afraid of bringing the State to order, to let the nation judge them for the lies they have spread in order to push the call for war, Official Secrets shows that it is a hard, terrifying journey but one that in the end brings its own rewards.
Ian D. Hall