Starring: Keira Knightley, Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes, Matthew Goode, Rhys Ifans, Adam Bakri, Indira Varma , Conleth Hill, Peter Guinness
Written By: Gregory Bernstein, Sara Bernstein, Gavin Hood
Directed By: Gavin Hood
Studio: Paramount / IFC Films
Buy On Amazon.com

A movie I haven’t heard about until now is out now on DVD, and Digital, and it’s a good political drama with a great British cast. Perhaps Gavin Hood has redeemed himself after X-Men Origins: Wolverine?

Official Secrets is about the heroic actions of British spy Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) who defied her Government to stop an illegal war, the Iraq War in 2003. Gun gets a memo with direction to collect blackmail info on UN council members to make them force a vote for the Invasion of Iraq. She didn’t think that was right and then leaked the secret memo to The Observer. Journalist Martin Bright (Matt smith) receives the info and begins following up on whether or not it’s legit or not. After that, Gun enters a shitstorm on what will happen with her for the actions she took, and for the people who published the leaked info and defended her.

I didn’t know anything about this movie but when I saw who was in it, what it was about and honestly, the Rotten Tomatoes ranking I decided to give the movie a shot. I don’t always agree with Rotten Tomatoes rankings but this time I did. I thought Official Secrets was an intense political drama and if you aren’t familiar with what happens, then it’s certainly gripping stuff. I know I never heard of this story or don’t remember much from it. Telling this story certainly feels relevant still, considering there’s a bunch of whistleblowers out there and the US Government is doing even crazier, shadier shit now. Definitely an interesting story if you like political dramas.

I thought Keira’s performance was great, but the rest of the cast was good as well. Matt Smith, Ralph Fiennes and Rhys Ifans come to mind as well for standing out too. I liked how the movie wasn’t too dragged out and just got things going from the beginning. It was just under 2 hours which I thought was a good length for this type of movie. I thought the mixture of the political aspect of the movie was interesting, but so was the legal parts as well.

This DVD only comes with a digital code and no extras. When I entered the digital code, it came up as HD so that was a nice surprise. DVDs are usually SD. Obviously, I watched this on Vudu in HD. No idea why studios release DVDs anymore when everything is in HD.

Official Secrets is a surprisingly good political drama that is still relevant today. Just think, we all thought Bush/Cheney and his administration were the worst back then. The political dramas from the current administration will be endless, I’m sure. Keira Knightely’s performance is strong, as well as the supporting cast as well. A good British ensemble cast and an intriguing story should please political drama fans.

Features:
None

Audio:
English Dolby Digital 5.1

Video:
Widescreen 1.75:1 Color

Bottom Line: An interesting and relevant political drama
Running Time: 112 mins
Rating: R
Extras Rating:
Overall Rating: