The Coolidge Corner Theater never fails to bring forth art films that are assured to provoke instantaneous debate (for better and worse). “Official Secrets” is no exception, as director Gavin Hood (“Eye in the Sky”) has given us another Iraq war ethical conundrum. The film stars Kiera Knightley, Ralph Fiennes, and Matt Smith among a slew of character actors sharing screen time. While “Official Secrets” is assuredly poised to spark a dialogue upon political corruption, and anti-war idealism, it’s almost guaranteed to be a conversation you’ve had many times prior.
The precedents set by previous films within the investigative journalism and anti-war partisan sub-genres inherently undermine “Official Secrets.” The film’s objective is to scrape the surface of classics like “All the President’s Men” or “Zero Dark Thirty.” This at the same time as it’s narrative stagnancy delegates it’s legacy closer to that of “Lions for Lambs.” The general film references are unavoidable. While this is by no means a bad film, movies like 2018’s “Vice” seemed to explore similar content with far more immersive flair and accessibility.
The principal issue that propels the film into irrelevance is an uneven narrative. The first half of the movie feels more towards a dissertation than an adequate formation of a plot, character development, and conflict. We have to go through an hour of political discourse and conjecture that doesn’t seem to serve the characters or plot in any facet, beyond discerning that the “powers that be” are unreliable (what a shock). The film admittedly reaches for a fresh perspective, setting the stage in the United Kingdom – only to convey to the audience that listening to English people speaking in ciphers on political gossip is just as bland and worn as when Americans do it.
However, the film appears to find it’s footing at the inciting incident, as the intrigue erects and the plot evolves into a whistleblower witch-hunt. While from this point on, the film certainly still subdues itself from being wholly compelling; we get sharp insights and a fiercely triumphant Kiera Knightley. Moral integrity is attentively traversed in the film’s second half, as we see the dissonance between loyalty to country and loyalty to the government. These potent proxies of idealism and roughly 2 or 3 scenes of a purely interesting subject are almost enough to forgive the film for being unequivocally engulfed in redundant political lecture, but it’s ultimately not.
While political-thriller aficionados may be wholly satisfied with the final product of this film, I surmise that viewers that find this particular blueprint to be stale will find this movie to be tolerable at most. “Official Secrets” has an abundant absence of cinematic value and lacks the emulation of similar genre films. It possesses many palatable ingredients. However, it is ultimately evidence that some stories are meant to be represented cinematically, while others are intended to be college research papers.
My Score: 5.8/10
