Weapons of mass deception
(Cert 15, 112mins)
TIMING is everything for a political thriller and current impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump give this slightly heavy-handed drama an edge. Katharine Gun didn’t bring down GeorgeW Bush or Tony Blair when she blew the whistle in the build-up to the Iraq War but it feels like the perfect time to tell the story of this very noble failure.
It’s 2003 and Gun (Keira Knightley) is trying to unwind in front of the TV after a busy day of eavesdropping on phone calls at Cheltenham’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). Blair is on the news and he’s blathering on about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and his links to Al Qaeda.
“Just because you’re the prime minister,” snarls Gun, “doesn’t mean you get to make up your own facts!”
Director Gavin Hood goes on to create suspense with painfully slow early noughties tech but nothing dates his story as powerfully as Knightley’s incredulity. She is just as outraged, but not quite so vocal, when she is sent a memo from America’s National Security Agency, asking British spooks for dirt that the Bush administration can use to blackmail members of the United Nations Security Council into backing Bush’s invasion plans.
Now Gun, like the CIA operative who listened into Trump’s chat with the Ukrainian president, is in a quandary. If she leaks the memo, she will lose her job and probably be sent to prison. But if she does nothing, will she have
committed an even bigger crime? Knightley sells Gun’s heroism and her vulnerability with the best performance of her career.The film isn’t just an advocate of the importance of whistleblowers, it also tells the story of the journalists who help break the story.
Not all the characters convince in scenes set in The Observer’s newsroom. Matt Smith is solid as investigative reporter Martin Bright but Rhys Ifans hams it up horribly as grizzled Washington correspondent EdVulliamy.
No one who has worked for former Observer editor Roger Alton would call him a shrinking violet but Conleth Hill’s shouty turn would feel more at home at Marvel’s Daily Bugle.
The details of Gun’s dealings with Ralph Fiennes’ lawyer Ben Emmerson are fascinating.We see how the memo is quickly dismissed as fake news in the US due to a sub-editor’s decision to change the word “favorite” to the UK spelling. Obviously, no one at this paper would make that mistake but reporters at shoddier organisations will feel Smith’s pain.