Geheimnis eines Lebens

Sorry, but Melita Norwood (the person on whom this was based) was a despicable person who fervently and slavishly loved Stalinist Soviet Union long after we knew they were as murderous and oppressive as the Nazis had been.

She did not go to Cambridge, but dropped out of Southhampton. She spent most of her time compromising and destroying the lives of many of her co-workers. And as a direct result of her work the Russians were able to target annihilative fission weapons at the UK instead of basic atomic bombs.

Red Joan is a cosy bland film inspired by the true story of granny spy Melita Norwood. She was unmasked as a KGB agent late in her life.

Judi Dench plays the elderly Joan Stanley who is taken in for questioning by the police as a suspected Soviet spy.

Her son Nick (Ben Miles) is a barrister who helps her as she is questioned. Nick learns that his mother was a scientist who worked in the laboratory that developed the atom bomb.

The flashbacks scenes had young Joan (Sophie Cookson) as an idealist communist sympathiser. She is fascinated by Leo (Tom Hughes) and his cousin Sonya who are supporters of the Russian revolution.

Joan gets a job within the Tube Alloys project. The government project that secretly developed the atomic bomb.

After the bombing of Hiroshima. Joan finds herself passing secrets so the Soviets also have parity in the nuclear arms race.

Joan also falls in love with her boss, Professor Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore) who is later suspected of possible espionage.

This is a plodding, sludgy film with an interminable romance subplot. This is really a television film.

Just because it is based on true facts does not meant it will be an interesting movie. This does not hold a candle to films/tv shows about the Cambridge Spies; Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean.

There are some good performances but it is a movie with no thrills.

I also did not buy the fact that Russia would not had been able to have developed the atomic bomb without Joan's help. After the war, Russian bought over their own share of Nazi scientists who had worked in developing the bomb.

Critics blast this film as a missed opportunity. I heartily disagree, spy films do not all have to be fast paced intrigue. This film is a slow burn and thoughtful character study on the motivations of a woman in extraordinary positions.

This is what I call a false biopic. These are usually extremely well made movies with good production values, well acted and directed but they also play fast and loose with the actual facts as to make them more "interesting" to the audience. This genre is very popular, especially in the UK, as they are good award bait and popular with the audiences. These are usually never bad movies and I can't really give them a bad rating, but they also almost always leave me a bit flat and, to be honest, I am getting a bit tired of them. So, Red Joan falls in this category and I have nothing more to add about it, except that at least the creators, having changed almost everything regarding the true story, gave us the courtesy of changing the name of the titular character, a move which I think is at least a bit more honest.

Playing the pleasant game of alternative history, we can make a couple of reasonable assumptions.

If Stalin had gotten The Bomb first, would he have used it to achieve global domination? Of course.

And Hitler? He would have leveled London without a second thought.

But the jarring plot point in this narrative is that Joan puts the US in the same category as those guys.

The Yanks took out Hiroshima, and Nagasaki - therefore they have no moral compass whatsoever and poor little Russia must have The Bomb to protect itself.

This is the basic problem with the script: when it comes to science Joan is a very smart cookie.

When it comes to other things - politics, people, sex - she doesn't really seem to know her ass from a hole in the ground.

In her concluding speech she makes the argument that she was right - 50 years of peace proving her decisions - but conveniently fails to mention the epically expensive arms race that resulted.

This is a well-done movie, and certainly worth the time, but the main character - as she's written - is not very convincing and it's reasonable to react to her with a strong sense of impatience.