She risked everything to stop an unjust war. Her government called her a
traitor. Based on world-shaking true events, Official Secrets tells the
true 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 War, Gun receives a memo from
the NSA with a shocking directive: the US is enlisting Britain’s help in
collecting compromising information on UN Security Council members in order
to blackmail them into voting in favor of an invasion of Iraq. Unable to
watch the world be rushed into an illegal war, Gun makes the gut-wrenching
decision to defy her government and leak the memo to the press. So begins
an explosive chain of events that will ignite an international firestorm,
expose a vast political conspiracy, and put Gun and her family directly in
harm’s way.
Review
Keira Knightly gives one of her best performances for some time in director
Gavin Hoods compelling and dramatic true story of how whistle-blower
Katherine Gun made public, details of how the United states government
were looking to coerce other United Nations countries into giving them a
mandate to invade Iraq in 2003.
Even if the story is well known to you it's to Hood's credit that he manages to keep "Official Secrets" tense for
most of it's running time. In lessor hands “Official Secrets”
could have turned out no better than a standard Sunday night TV drama
however fine performances from not only Knightly but also Ralph Fiennes and
Matt Smith help lift it into something that’s worth going to see at the
cinema.
