Red Joan

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.

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.

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.

Greetings again from the darkness. Sir Trevor Nunn is a Tony Award winner best known for his stage productions, and for being director of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1968 through 1986. The film is "inspired by a true story", and Lindsay Shapero has adapted Jennie Rooney's 2013 novel, which was a blend of history and fiction taken from the life of Melita Norwood ... the longest serving British KGB spy.

Dame Judi Dench plays Joan Stanley (the movie version of the aforementioned Ms. Norwood) whom we first meet as she is being arrested for treason by MI5 agents in May 2000. Most of the film consists of Joan being interrogated while having flashbacks to her earlier life, beginning in 1938 at Cambridge University. She was a hard-working nose-to-the grindstone Physics student who is drawn in to the fascinating world of Sonja (Tereza Srbova) and her brother Leo (Tom Hughes), who are supporters of the Soviet party. In the flashback scenes, young Joan is played by Sophie Cookson (who reminds of a young Faye Dunaway).

The film spends most of its time in flashback mode, and Ms. Cookson excels as the idealistic Joan first in her scenes with Sonja and Leo, and later with Stephen Campbell Moore who plays Professor Max Davies. Joan is recruited to work in the lab with Davies, as the secretly work to create the Atom bomb. It's Sonja and Leo who coerce Joan into passing along secret documents that allow Stalin's Russia to keep pace on bomb development. She easily flies under the radar since, as Sonja tells her, "Nobody would suspect us. We are women."

From a historical perspective, the film kind of falls flat. It also doesn't qualify as a British spy thriller since there are really no thrills to be found. "The Americans" TV show was infinitely better at the spy genre than this one; however, if the film works on any level, it's as moral debate fodder. Joan clearly has her reasons for doing what she thought was right ... leveling the playing field between super powers, so that none had an advantage. The question is, what is right and who is to decide? During this time, alliances were quite fluid between Russia, Britain and the United States, and she believed her actions saved lives.

Dame Judi is really not on screen much, and when she is, there's little for her to do except play innocent and dream of years gone by. She was labeled "Granny spy", and though her story is interesting, and does provide yet another aspect from WWII, the film itself never really grabs us as viewers. The early periods are well filmed with beautiful costumes and sets, but we are never as dumbstruck as Joan's son (Ben Miles) when he admits he thought his mum was merely an over-educated librarian. As a character study, there's something here ... but as entertainment, it's a bit lacking.

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.