Red Joan Cert: 12A, 1hr 41mins
I love a film that gets under way at high speed, and Red Joan is certainly that. In the space of barely 90 seconds our ageing anti-heroine has pruned a bush in her suburban front garden, read the paper – ooh, look, someone important at the Foreign Office has died – and answered the insistent knocking at her front door.
It’s Special Branch, who are there to arrest her, frogmarch her off down her own garden path and swiftly charge her with 27 breaches of the Official Secrets Act.
Trevor Nunn, the acclaimed theatre director who likes to make a feature film every decade or so, is clearly in no mood to hang about. He’s also keen to deploy his secret weapon – Dame Judi Dench – whose mission impossible it is to convince us, albeit for only 100 minutes, that spying for the Russians isn’t necessarily the most wicked and dreadful high treason.
Trevor Nunn’s latest film stars Judi Dench (above with Sophie Cookson) whose mission impossible it is to convince us that spying for the Russians isn’t the most wicked high treason
And being the ever-watchable Dame Judi, she does it, of course, helped by the judicious editing of history and by Nunn’s clever use of that most overworked of cinematic devices, the flashback.
Here, however, the latter works rather beautifully, transporting us back to the idealistic, tweed-clad, aspiring-spy-riddled world of Cambridge University in the late Thirties. Another country, indeed.
What ensues is inspired by the little-known but real-life story of Melita Norwood, who was born in Bournemouth in 1912, educated in Southampton and spied for the Russians for some 40 years.
And being the ever-watchable Dame Judi, she does it, of course, giving a masterclass in conveying internalised indecision and general befuddlement as the aging Russian spy Joan
By the time the British intelligence services caught up with her nefarious activities, she was in her 80s and it was decided that prosecuting her was not in the public interest.
Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay takes considerable creative liberties with the underlying story, which is fair enough for a film actually adapted from a Jennie Rooney novel.
Not only is our central character now called Joan Stanley but the action is shifted forward into the immediate pre-war period, a feminist subtext is introduced by making Joan a gifted science undergraduate, and we learn that what she did then she did for… well, shall we say one part idealism, one part love.
Sophie Cookson (above with Tom Hughes) is pitch-perfect casting as the younger Joan in the film’s many flashbacks which transport us to Cambridge University in the late Thirties
It shouldn’t work but it does, helped naturally by Dench’s performance – a masterclass in conveying internalised indecision (Should she confess? Did Special Branch spot her Che Guevara mug?) and general befuddlement as the ageing Joan is interrogated, and also by the casting of Sophie Cookson.
The Kingsman star is pitch-perfect as the younger Joan, who may be a gifted physicist but has a habit of falling for the wrong men. They’re either married or, er… exotically handsome Russian agents.
As the latter (and with a title like Red Joan, I don’t think I’m giving much away) Tom Hughes – who plays Prince Albert in TV’s Victoria – is less convincing, the effort of combining brooding good looks with a wayward mid-European accent perhaps proving something of a stretch for the Cheshire-born actor.
While Cheshire-born Tom Hughes fails to convince as a Russian agent, Tereza Srbova (above) is much more successful as his glamorous cousin, but then then was born in Prague
Far more convincing is Tereza Srbova, who plays his equally glamorous cousin, but then she was born in Prague.
With Nunn at the helm there are some lovely supporting performances to enjoy in a film that has obvious wartime echoes of recent British films such as The Imitation Game and Their Finest.
Ben Miles doesn’t have a lot to work with as the older Joan’s lawyer son, but what he has he uses to good effect, while Stephen Campbell Moore provides his customary quiet class as the Cambridge professor who leads the organisation engaged on vital wartime research that Joan joins as an over-qualified assistant.
I loved the constant shifting to and fro in time between the younger (and very pretty) woman of principle and the older woman faced with the daunting prospect of finally paying for those principles.
But it’s the modest shift forward in history – into the real horrors of the Second World War and the dawning of the Nuclear Age – that make the film work.
Suddenly, it’s pacifism and a desire to save thousands of lives that becomes the driver rather than a deep-seated love of Stalinist communism.
Mind you, Judi Dench could probably make us warm to that too.
ALSO OUT THIS WEEK
Greta (15)
Rating: 
Remember Single White Female, about the seemingly pleasant flatmate who turns out to be something very different? Well, Greta is a bit like that but with a generous smattering of Hitchcockian flourishes thrown in for good measure.
All of which comes as a bit of surprise because it’s directed by Neil Jordan, who made both The Crying Game and Mona Lisa and normally likes to serve up both art-house atmosphere and sophisticated twists alongside his drama, but here delivers something more straightforward and watchable.
Chloë Grace Moretz plays Frances, a young graduate who has just moved into a fashionable New York apartment but is yet to forsake her rather attractive small-town ways, such as small acts of kindness.
While Greta relies rather too heavily on people doing stupid things and other genre clichés, it’s nicely acted by the two female leads: Chloë Grace Moretz (above) and Isabelle Huppert
So when she finds a handbag on the subway she doesn’t even think of keeping it but tracks down its owner and returns it. Which is how she meets Greta, played by the brilliant Isabelle Huppert.
Right from the start, it’s made clear that the lonely Greta is not what she appears. Yes, what ensues relies rather too heavily on people doing stupid things and other genre clichés, but it’s nicely acted by the two female leads and does feature two Jordan hallmarks – a haunting theme tune, which in this case is the very apt Where Are You sung by Julie London, and a cameo appearance from Crying Game star Stephen Rea.
Dragged Across Concrete (18)
Rating: 
By careless accident, I’ve now seen S Craig Zahler’s nasty police thriller twice, which is two times more than most people will need to. Unless they have a real penchant for pictures that, despite all the initial swagger and style, turn out to be unpleasantly violent, over-reliant on Quentin Tarantino for wordy, blood-soaked inspiration, are demeaning to women and go on – criminally – for over two-and-a-half hours.
Mel Gibson stars as an ageing police detective in sudden need of money but it’s only co-star Vince Vaughn who emerges with his reputation halfway intact.