Prolific playwright David Hare has always been particularly concerned with politics, justice, secrecy and inner conflict, and so when he turned to directing for the screen, rather than just writing, it was apt that the result would bring all these themes together. And how! Naturally it helped a great deal to be able to draw on such a fine cast, led by the peerlessly subtle Bill Nighy. He plays the weary MI5 operative Johnny Worricker, pulled into uncovering a web of governmental corruption through reading a sensitive report. He declines to hand back the offending papers when effectively threatened to do so, and thereafter his options are increasingly straitened.
Hare's establishment cover-up plot may be a fairly off-the-shelf one, but the dialogue is quite dazzlingly sharp, each word chosen with care and carrying so much weight, and that alone puts it in a different class to most flashier conspiracy thrillers.
8/10
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