Red Joan

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.

Judi was very good of course, but doesn't feature hugely. Film was ok but felt like a missed opportunity. Could have been better. Meandered through an interesting story in a pedestrian manner. Last 10 mins it picked up. 6/10.

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 could have easily be a big + spy story. One of those stories that survive the times because the writers dig behind the veils of historic facts, and make essential values of human existance see the light of day. That value here is that one human can break through the simplicfied truths of time-bound consciousness, the illusions of wrong and right, dares to think his own moral mind and make a decision that serves humanity on a deeper level of evolution. It shows as a premise that is strongly tied to the story but not convincingly develloped.

What is left is a skilled and entertaining movie, not a timeless one.

If you think you know all there is to know about the spy history since 1945, you will find this film pretty interesting and revealing. i have not heard about the ''granny spy'' until now and its a good melodramatic, historic flick, made for the newest generations.

judi dench does a remarkable appearance in this drama that jumps back and forth in history, the present is spun around police interrogation, and dialouges with her gobsmacked lawyer son, and the past where we follow the main from studies at cambridge into advancing into assistant at the nuclear research institute.

its has some romantic interludes here and there, the way they are made weakens the production, because its not profound enough . the score is classic style british drama series style of music, and gives a nice float to the motion.

its worth a glance thinks the grumpy old man if youre into the war and cold war history, and the keywords are like in many other features to forgive , bow and forget. recommended