X
- 2019
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 52 m
- 2019
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 52 m
Summary She risked everything to stop an unjust war. Her government called her a traitor. Based on world-shaking true events, Official Secrets tells the gripping story of Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a British intelligence specialist whose job involves routine handling of classified information. One day in 2003, in the lead up to the Iraq Wa...
Directed By: Gavin Hood
- 2019
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 52 m
- 2019
- R
- IFC Films
- 1 h 52 m
Official Secrets
63
7.3
Where to Watch
Summary She risked everything to stop an unjust war. Her government called her a traitor. Based on world-shaking true events, Official Secrets tells the gripping story of Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley), a British intelligence specialist whose job involves routine handling of classified information. One day in 2003, in the lead up to the Iraq Wa...
Directed By: Gavin Hood
Where to Watch
Top Cast
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 28 Critic Reviews
63
64% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
32% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
Metascore
Generally Favorable
Based on 28 Critic Reviews
63
64% Positive
18 Reviews
18 Reviews
32% Mixed
9 Reviews
9 Reviews
4% Negative
1 Review
1 Review
The story Hood’s film tells is a vital one to revisit, not just because the deceptions it illuminates inform so much of the political and international morass affecting our daily lives, but also shows the power of a single act of moral courage, and it does so while being blisteringly entertaining cinema.
While Rhys Ifans chews scenery as a scruff-faced foreign correspondent, Knightley plays it taut and believable, and, as we know, nobody walks on cobblestones better than she. The end result is a professionally made film that is whistle-blowingly relevant, starring an excellent actress who successfully comes in from her Pride & Prejudice past.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 65 User Ratings
7.3
75% Positive
49 Ratings
49 Ratings
23% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
2% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 65 User Ratings
7.3
75% Positive
49 Ratings
49 Ratings
23% Mixed
15 Ratings
15 Ratings
2% Negative
1 Rating
1 Rating
Official Secrets is an incredibly smart film that celebrates the whistleblowers of the world. It also shows the occasional futility in these efforts as well. It illustrates the all-powerful machine that is government and how that machine can destroy whoever it wants pretty damn easily.
While Gun’s story is certainly worth telling and this is a well-intentioned, solid film with fine work from Knightley, Official Secrets is too heavy-handed and drab, and falls far short of procedural thrillers such as “All the President’s Men” and “Spotlight” and “The Post” or broadly entertaining whistleblower stories such as “Erin Brockovich.”
Official Secrets is a timely, ambitious if broad take on a complex subject, but remains engaging and entertaining. anchored by Keira Knightley on great form.
Along the way there’s a scene of a secret meeting in a parking garage that’s more realistic, maybe, than the shadowy one in “All The President’s Men,” but not nearly as gripping. This problem persists throughout.
Ralph Fiennes as Gun’s eventual lawyer, however, is totally forgettable, as is much of the standard-issue, self-important docudrama. So much of Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein and Gavin Hood’s screenplay arrives with a thud that it might’ve been written with clenched fists. Knightley’s overwrought performance doesn’t help either.
This is a great movie about a **** tries to prevent **** you are interested in international politics, you will like it Her efforts might be in vain. But people could see a dark side of politics. Today, there was still no peace in the Middle East. Hope we have peace there.
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I think I can say with absolute certainty that this is Keira Knightley's best performance in a drama set in a current era and her best film since Colette.
It's an ordinary drama but it kept me entertained. It's a bit slow, but I never got bored so that's already a huge benefit.
Its director Gavin Hood maintains a good quality but his performance is more at the level of what he did in Eye in the Sky and far from what he achieved in Tsotsi.
But still I think it's worth it.
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So Ralph comes in later, way too late. And still he takes over the film like, um.. you know who must not be named.
Official Secrets
Gavin Hood is so not the director I would think of when a geo-political story is to be deconstructed on the screen. And is probably the only reason why this film works the best than any other maker could have made. We have a general perception by now on how to receive a film. You feel the tone of the film within the first five minutes and start adjusting yourselves accordingly. The assumption is both part of educating yourself on how to catch a film and also the disadvantageous alibi that one cannot get rid off. But every now and then a film comes that is uniquely volatile on the speech and has a spin that you'd be fooled by its nature. Not manipulative just incredibly fresh and uprightly vocal.
And that is the only reason why the film works. Against a standard script and a textbook execution, this brand new information flashed in front of you, is why you enjoy a film like this. Yes, enjoy. Entertaining is not the feeling you were hoping to receive in a film like such. And I know it might look like the film is substantially gifted and perhaps is why gripping throughout the course. But it is also the way it is structured.
There is real commercial visible in the way every information is passed. And there is nothing bad about that. Endorsing a material and sticking by the promise is what every consumer, viewer could hope for. For a film like Official Secrets that is about the dirty works going under the table the film is awfully clean. And not in some formal, paper-ish style but the old western genre kind. Your space is respectable and everyone gets room, lines, moments to fire the gun; the duel is soothing.
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Production Company
Entertainment One,
Above The Line Productions,
Classified Films,
Clear Pictures Entertainment,
GS Media,
OS,
Raindog Films,
Screen Yorkshire,
The Mark Gordon Company
Release Date Aug 30, 2019
Duration 1 h 52 m
Rating R
Tagline The Truth is Always the First Casualty of War
Awards
Women Film Critics Circle Awards
• 7 Nominations
Film Club's The Lost Weekend
• 2 Wins & 2 Nominations
Chlotrudis Awards
• 2 Nominations
