Official Secrets Gavin Hood Delivers a Solid Follow Up Grade: B

Source: IMDB

Official Secrets is based on actual events, surrounding a young woman named Katherine Gun (Kierra Knightley). Katherine Gun violated the official secret law within her job, leaking information that United Nations is going to rig the voting, so the Iraq War can go through. Experience a woman whom rather risk it all and be known as a traitor for the good of humanity, as she at least made an effort to do something right, while others wouldn’t do the same. The director behind Official Secrets previous film was Eye in the Sky, a great underrated film so I was pretty stoked to see what would Gavin Hood be involved with next. The Cinematography and Score were fine. The cast was solid all around. Kierra Knightley had a pretty good performance as Katherine Gun. What a courageous unselfish heroic woman Katherine is, bless her heart indeed. I feel most people in Katherine’s position when receiving the email she has gotten, would feel disgusted in the details of the email... However would not even attempt to go against her job and several other nations as well. A chance in losing respect from millions of people and severing a great amount of jail time, though it’s wrong what is said in the email, but to go leak out this information for the good of humanity is also a dangerous risk indeed. Though the film doesn’t really explore this character, I felt it was developed enough for me to find her a likable character in which I rooted for her beginning to end, hoping for justice as well. Few supporting performances I liked enough to mention Ralph Fiennes, Matt Smith, and Adam Bakri all played pretty good performances as well. I felt some pacing issues, sometimes the film felt a bit slow for me. I’m not a huge political person, so when I’m fed with nothing but politics that aren’t engaging I just lose some investment in the film from time to time. I don’t think Official Secrets is on the level of Gavin Hood’s last film... However I still thought this was a good film. The film has taught me a fair amount of information or clarify my curiosity of past events. I was always curious why sometimes I hear that the War in Iraq was completely pointless, a war in which my cousin had to serve in. The film pretty much explained my curious mind towards this subject, as I must say: I feel disgusted by the entire thing. All these people went out of their way, to go to this country to fight without a purpose, thousands murdered and thousands wounded, for what?! What Katherine Gun was trying to prevent from happening needed to happen. Even when she leaked out this information, they still over ruled the vote due to the fact they just thought a completely pointless war would be the answer to the problems our nation is dealing with... Truly awful stuff. It also taught me about the official secret law, in which I never knew about. Which now clears up my curiosity, in how much corruption in the world never gets dealt with or is kept in secret for the longest amount of time. The story behind Katherine Gun exposing this classified information and the struggle she had to go through, due to the fact breaking a law was truly inspiring as well. It’s not like she expose this information to seek revenge or did it all for selfishness, she did it because she cared about thousands of innocent lives, plus separating families that served no purpose in having these soldiers going to this country, in fighting a war that didn’t need to exist. Though Katherine’s plan to stop the war didn’t go through, you must give her respect for actually making an effort to prevent the war from happening. I really enjoyed the third act, especially the final scene... Truly a feel good hilarious moment. Overall, Official Secrets is a good film. I do recommend this film, a well told story and one you can learn a good amount of information as well. -Mitch Smietana