OFFICIAL SECRETS : Tuesday 10th December 2019.

'OFFICIAL SECRETS' which I finally got around to seeing this week, is an MA15+ Rated British and American Co-Produced documentary drama offering Directed and Co-Written for the screen by Gavin Hood, whose previous film making credits include 'Tsotsi', 'Rendition', 'X-Men Origins : Wolverine', 'Ender's Game' and 'Eye in the Sky' more recently. Based on the 2008 book 'The Spy Who Tried to Stop a War' by Marcia and Thomas Mitchell, the film saw its World Premier screening at Sundance back in January this year, had its US release at the end of August, its UK release in mid-October and it finally arrived into Australian cinemas at the back end of November. Having garnered generally average Reviews en route, although Keira Knightley, as the lead Actress, has been praised for her performance, the film has so far taken close to US$6M.

In this true story, here Katherine Teresa Gun (Keira Knightley) is a British translator who worked for the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), a British intelligence agency, based in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, England, who's job it was to translate Mandarin Chinese into English. At the end of January 2003, while at work at GCHQ Gun read an email from a Frank Koza, the Chief of Staff at the 'regional targets' division of the American National Security Agency, a US intelligence agency. The email requested aid in a secret operation to bug the United Nations offices of six nations, those being Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, and Pakistan. These were the six 'swing nations' on the UN Security Council that could determine whether the UN approved the invasion of Iraq, or not, and to overthrow its President Saddam Hussein.

Gun was so outraged by the email, that she secretly downloaded a copy of the email to a disc, printed off a copy and took it home with her. After contemplating the email over the weekend, Gun gave the email to a friend, Yvonne Ridley (Hattie Morahan) who was acquainted with several journalists, but most notably Martin Bright (Matt Smith) who worked at The Observer newspaper. At first Bright doubted the authenticity of the email and was ordered by his Editor Roger Alton (Conleth Hill) to do some further investigative work to uncover the facts behind the mystery email, before going to print.

Gun heard no more of the email, and had all but forgotten about it until early in March, when she saw it reproduced on the front page of The Observer newspaper. The next day, with the story leaked to the worlds press and media centres; Bright's telephone ringing hot; and the GCHQ going into lockdown with everyone a suspect and everyone in Gun's department being interviewed to find the suspect and the culprit who dared to contravene the Official Secrets Act. However, soon after this worldwide breaking news, the American media channels get on the phone and claim that the leaked document is a fake, because  of spelling errors in the text that are written in English rather than American. Upon checking the original transcript with his reported text, it is revealed that the press office assistant Nicole Mowbray (Hanako Footman) had corrected Bright's written text using spell checker, therefore casting doubt over the validity that the email is genuine.  

Less than a week after the Observer story, Gun, who was so wracked with guilt over what she had done, and wanting to protect the integrity and wellbeing of her work colleagues, confessed to her line manager at GCHQ that she had leaked the email, and was promptly arrested, subject to questioning, and is released pending a decision to prosecute in three months hence. In the meantime, her house is turned upside down, and her husband Yasar Gun (Adam Bakri) who coincidentally is an Iraq foreign national and a Muslim, who only has residency status because of his marriage to Katherine, is about to have his life turned inside out too by less than supportive authorities. Meanwhile, Guns court appointed lawyer states to her upon her release from Police custody that this case is way to far above her head, and that she should contact the team at 'Liberty' who are more versed in the field of work that she clearly needs.

Bright enlists the support of fellow Observer investigative journalist Ed Vulliamy (Rhys Ifans) who is furious at censorship by his own paper of a story he filed during October-December 2002 from an inside CIA source, affirming that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, while intelligence was being 'cooked up' by a special office in the Pentagon - and then locating the NSA secret agent, Frank Koza, who ordered the illegal bugging, and was the originator of Gun's leaked email. In addition, Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) who is the foreign affairs editor at The Observer, is posted to Iraq to report on the success, or not, of the US Army's search for Iraq's alleged stash of weapons of mass destruction, which at the time was drawing a big fat hairy blank!

In the meantime, Gun takes the advice of her former state chosen lawyer and visits the offices of Liberty which is headed up by Director Shami Chakrabarti (Indira Varma). Liberty is an advocacy group which promotes civil liberties and human rights, and often offers its expert services for free, as they did in Gun's case, utilising the input of Ben Emmerson (Ralph Fiennes) a prominent British barrister, specialising in public international law, human rights and humanitarian law, and international criminal law.

Gun has some decisions to make if she is to be prosecuted, and in the meantime is told in no uncertain terms that when she signed her contract of employment with the GCHQ she was also signing the Official Secrets Act which strictly forbids her to reveal any details at all about her work at GCHQ to her defending counsel, or to anyone else for that matter, and if it is found that she has, then additional charges will be brought against her. All this is pending on whether GCHQ and indeed the Government of the UK wish to prosecute, and so Gun has to playing the waiting game, bide her time, and sit idly at home for six months awaiting next steps. When Emmerson calls her one morning with the good news that she is now able to discuss freely her case with him, he counters this with the not so good news that the prosecution is going ahead.

With the appointed date of Gun's court hearing approaching, her decision rests with to plead guilty or not guilty, with the latter resting upon proving that the 2003 War in Iraq was in fact illegal under international law. The day before the trial, Gun's defence team had asks the Government for any records of legal advice about the lawfulness of the war that it had received during the run-up to the war. Gun planned to plead 'not guilty', saying in her defence that she acted to prevent imminent loss of life in a war she considered illegal. On her day in court before taking the stand she meets Bright for the first time, and he gives her reassurances that what she did was brave and courageous, and that he will be in court watching the proceedings and sends her his support.

The case came to court on 24th February 2004. Within half an hour, the case was dropped because the prosecution declined to offer any evidence. A full trial might have exposed any such documents, sought from the Government the day before by Emmerson, to public scrutiny, as the defence was expected to argue that trying to stop an unlawful war of aggression overcame Gun's obligations under the Official Secrets Act, and in revealing that both powers on either side of the Atlantic were complicit in an illegal war would have exposed them both to a whole world of scrutiny and hurt that neither wanted. And so the Judge announces to Katherine Gun, that she is free to go. 

In a mid-credits scene we see Emmerson sea fishing at a beach close by to his holiday home, when Ken Macdonald (Jeremy Northam) the Director of Public Prosecutions siddles up to his long time buddy with his own tackle box and rod. They had previously crossed swords over the Gun case when Macdonald as the newly appointed DPP announced that he would be prosecuting the case which Emmerson would be defending. In the final analysis Macdonald tries to justify his position for keeping Gun hanging for almost a year in limbo, at which point Emmerson replies with go find another spot to fish that is not close to me!

I have to say that I enjoyed 'Official Secrets' more than I expected. It's a slow burn of a movie, especially the second act when the storyline starts to meander a little, particularly after the intensity and emotion of the first act when the principled Katherine Gun, who has nothing to gain and everything to lose puts everything on the line - herself, her husband and her work colleagues for a cause she truly believes in and is deeply committed to, and before the gripping third act which sees the tables turned unexpectedly in her favour and the big pay off. This is Keira Knightley's show for sure, aided by a fine turn from Ralph Fiennes in the little screen time he does have, all pulled together by Director Gavin Hood, who has demonstrated before his finesse with crafting a thought provoking true life human drama of a serious subject matter that resonates in today's world as much as it did back in 2003, and even though this political scandal with all its legal and journalistic intrigue may have faded from memory, it is a story that needed to be told.

'Official Secrets' merits three claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, from a potential five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-