Official Secrets (2019)

Directed by: Gavin Hood | 112 minutes | biography, drama | Actors: Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, Katherine Kelly Ralph Fiennes, Indira Varma, Matt Smith, Rhys Ifans, MyAnna Buring, Kenneth Cranham, Jack Farthing, Tamsin Greig, Hattie Morahan, Jeremy Northam, Conleth Hill, Hanako Footman, Shaun Dooley, Monica Dolan, Chris Larkin

It’s almost a genre in itself: movies about whistleblowers, people who risk their own safety to expose abuses. The most famous whistleblower of all time, Mark Felt aka Deep Throat – the man who brought the Watergate scandal into the open – was of course wonderfully immortalized in ‘All the President’s Men’ (1976). Edward Snowden, who released information about the NSA’s wiretapping in 2013, inspired Oliver Stone to make the film ‘Snowden’ (2016). Several documentaries have also been published about him. Daniel Ellsberg, who passed the Pentagon Papers to the press in the early 1970s, was portrayed in ‘The Pentagon Papers’ (2003) and more recently ‘The Post’ (2017). A documentary about Chelsea Manning, who leaked information about misconduct by the US military in Iraq, has now been released and the first feature film about her is waiting. Katherine Gun fits perfectly into this list of whistleblowers, but her name is a lot less known to the general public. British Gun worked as a translator at the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in London and came across a top secret email in 2003 that she couldn’t keep to herself. Her story has now been made into ‘Official Secrets’ (2019), by South African director Gavin Hood, the man behind the impressive, Oscar-winning ‘Tsotsi’ (2005).

Keira Knightley takes on the role of Katherine Gun in this film. It is 2003 and the British media is very much aware of the imminent American attack on Iraq. Tony Blair, then Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, calls for British involvement in the attack. Something that makes Katherine’s hair stand on end. In fact, there is no evidence at all for the weapons of mass destruction being talked about; she thinks they are lies, which are intended to influence public opinion. Her husband, the Turkish-Kurdish Yasar (Adam Bakri), thinks she shouldn’t get too worked up about it, but when Katherine receives a secret email at work in which the NSA, the American security service, calls her and her colleagues diplomats from certain Listening to UN member states, she smells danger. The tapped information must be used to blackmail the diplomats so that they nevertheless agree to the attack on Iraq. Katherine is upset about the e-mail and after much deliberation she decides to pass it on through a former colleague. Journalist Martin Bright (Matt Smith) of The Observer receives a copy of the e-mail and decides to proceed with publication. That gets the ball rolling and the security service soon discovers that the information must have been leaked from GCHQ. Katherine decides to turn herself in, after which her fate – and that of the man she loves – is in the hands of the tribunal.

On paper, Katherine Gun’s story reads like an exciting page turner; unfortunately, this movie version of Gavin Hood isn’t as exciting as we’d hoped. There are certainly exciting moments, but they can be counted on one hand. Just because the story is true and we can google how things ended, that doesn’t mean the movie has to be boring. But that is unfortunately ‘Official Secrets’ at times. Knightley makes the most of it with a fine performance, in which we clearly feel how she weighs between her own interests and safety and that of her country. This is a woman for whom honesty is paramount and who expects the same from her environment. In her struggle, she has human rights lawyer Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes) by her side. That could have resulted in spectacular acting, but because the lawsuit goes out like a candle, that promise is not fulfilled. It’s a shame that the qualities of Fiennes go unused! Also in the scenes on the newsroom, not all the talents of the actors – in addition to Smith, among others Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans and Conleth Hill – are used to the fullest and the events and characters remain on the flat side. In fact, after Katherine decides to pass the mail, for a long time, little happens to get us excited, even though that seems to be the intention of the creators. Only when deportation threatens her Kurdish husband does the fire flare up again. Unfortunately, that turns out to be short-lived.

‘Official Secrets’ – the title is just as uninspired as the story – promises a lot but unfortunately can’t deliver it all. It’s not Keira Knightley’s fault; she superbly plays the brave whistleblower who risks her life to expose the dirty game the authorities are playing. A woman who deserves more credit than she gets and whose name we will definitely remember from now on. Her story could have been – and should have been – much more exciting and the talents of Knightley’s colleagues Fiennes, Smith and all those others should have been put to better use. What remains is a rock-solid film that has absolutely the right intentions, but which fails to excite and inspire us and gets stuck in a somewhat boring summary of the facts.