Official Secrets review – Keira Knightley shines as a very British whistleblower
Knightley gives a sympathetic performance as Iraq war whistleblower Katharine Gun in this shrewd and relevant spy drama
• Keira Knightley: ‘Iraq was the first time I’d been politically engaged’
There’s something interestingly tough and forthright about this slow-burner from director and co-writer Gavin Hood. It is a beady-eyed spy drama that has shrewd things to say about the British establishment’s tendency to spite under pressure, about the eternal duality of cockup and conspiracy, about the Kafkaesque problems involved in defending yourself legally against a treason charge, and, importantly, about the kind of young, vulnerable people that we end up depending on to tell us how we are governed.
Official Secrets shows that spy dramas from real life are very often not action thrillers such as Bond or Bourne or Homeland – or indeed Hood’s last movie, Eye in the Sky, from 2015 – but something more like nuclear-level office politics.