Official secrets budget skin#
Official secrets budget trial#

To fill time, Hood also hangs out with the Observer journalists who attempt to corroborate and print the memo, particularly obsessive D.C.

Official secrets budget trial#

While the trial marches forward, she gets less and less attention as Hood re-focuses the story on her defense lawyer Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes), who comes up with the brilliant idea of putting the Iraq War itself on trial to justify Gun’s actions. As solid as Knightley is, she’s only able to play Gun as stubborn, conscience-stricken, and almost childishly simple in defining right from wrong. It’s a dry and honorable retelling of events that exists mostly to remind us who she was, and why any potential whistleblowers out there should honor her example. Yet, “Official Secrets” doesn’t seem to intimately know Gun. Bush assuring their country that war was the best course of action. Hood incorporates wincing flashbacks of the demonstrations on vintage (pre-flatscreen) TVs, as well as archival footage of Blair and George W. The worldwide anti-invasion protests set a record until the first Women’s March. Iraq was an unpopular war even before it began. A screaming match at the offices of the Observer, who can’t decide whether to print the memo, ends with someone offering a calming cup of tea. And because “Official Secrets” is set in England, the drama is genteel.

Instead, Hood (whose 2007 film “Rendition” shares the same righteous indignation) clearly enjoys exposing institutional rot, and challenging the idea that just doing one’s job is an ethical excuse.

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Yet, except for a silly stretch when Gun slinks to the mailbox clutching her confidential memo, sealed in a pink envelope, jumping out of her skin at every noise, Hood doesn’t goose the script with extra drama. Gun’s in the miserable position of knowing just enough about MI6’s spying techniques that she’s afraid of the consequences of coming forward. Gun’s story brushes past a dozen currently relevant topics from fake news to racial profiling. Meanwhile, Yasar agrees to downplay his existence, fearing that if people knew about Gun’s brown-skinned husband, she’d lose public support. Yasar loves his wife, but can’t understand why she’d risk both of their freedoms for an ethical ideal. In a surprising move, the government tightened the pressure by attempting to deport her husband Yasar (Adam Bakri), a Kurdish refugee from Turkey who came to England seeking asylum. Still, at her trial, Gun stood in a caged box as though she was Osama Bin Laden. “I am not trying to overthrow my government,” she insists. Unsurprisingly, Gun was charged under the Official Secrets Act, which is, essentially, treason.