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This is my previous post on the first film in the trilogy, Page Eight, from July 2011:

The BBC screened this film last night, but it has also been doing the rounds of festivals too (here is the trailer from the Toronto Film Festival), so deserves a thread of its own. The first film directed by David Hare since 1997's The Designated Mourner, it was a very enjoyable return to the 'tension packed conversations in nondescript government offices and conference rooms, classy restauarants, sumptuous apartments and country homes and in the private chambers of the Prime Ministers' style of spy thrillers after the rather over the top shenanigans of the Bourne/Spooks action thrillers. (It also I guess works as a good palate cleanser in preparation for the forthcoming remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy)

I am not exactly sure how it will go down in the US as the plot revolves around a source revealing the exact locations of secret US torture sites around the world with the titular page eight being the off hand remark in the file that reveals that the British Prime Minister knew of these actions and colluded with the US in deceiving the British public. Throw in the subplot involving Rachel Weisz as a daughter of a Middle Eastern activist who is looking for justice for her brother killled by the IDF while protesting the demolition of houses in the West Bank during the building of the security wall, a plot which feels as if it combines the current issues involving the Wall with the issues surrounding the protracted inquiry into the death of Tom Hurndall in 2003 (or perhaps even more pertinently, Rachel Corrie), and it might make uncomfortable viewing for some.

The other major 2003 issue that seems to get folded into the drama is the death of David Kelly since Michael Gambon's character as the head of the security agency, after passing over the dossier then suffers a suspiciously fatal heart attack at his home (I am worried that Gambon may be in that stage of his career where the roles may be trying to tell him something - either having him die here, get bumped off in The Good Shepherd, or have an incapacitating illness in The Life Aquatic! Not the most comforting kinds of roles to be offered on a regular basis!) The idea of extra-judicial killing hangs heavily throughout the film, as Bill Nighy's character then goes on the run, although this idea is kept somewhat in the background of the events. This does however lead to the marvellously tense conversation with Ralph Fiennes' deeply sinister PM when he demands the incriminating dossier back from Nighy.

I could see how some of the more mannered or oblique spy conversations could become frustrating, though there is a really nice payoff in the one scene between Nighy and Saskia Reeves talking about trust (which acts as a counterpoint to an earlier scene in which Nighy is outlining the dossier for the spiky government minister), that really mitigated that approach for me. Especially as, despite all the heavyhanded political stuff outlined above, the theme of the film feels more about trust between individual people and whether unconditional trust in another person is still at all possible.

Nighy is very good in a role that, like Matt Damon's part in The Good Shepherd, requires a certain monotonous tone to it. However he does add some nice flashes of a buried humourous personality early on (I hate those darn pass code door locks too, and always seem to be the last one informed when someone has changed the codes on them!) and has a really touching scene later in the meeting with his daughter (with a great joke about 'conceptual' artists!)

One of the great strengths of this film has to be the cast. In addition to the above I have to single out Judy Davis, who is magnificent as Nighy's sort-of nemesis in the intelligence department. There also seems to be, in the late in the film revelation about her using her son to get close to Nighy's daughter, a sly dig at the recent governmental scandal of ministers employing their relatives!

Turks & Caicos

An excellent spy drama, as Worricker is stumbled upon by chance (hiding away from the events of Page Eight) in the Bahamas by an American CIA agent (Christopher Walken) and makes a deal with him to bring down a sinister cabal of 'New Jersey businessmen' in exchange for being allowed his freedom.

The film starts off a little slowly and is pretty mannered in both speech and actions (though I guess that makes sense as everyone is duplicitous and shifty!) but shifts into gear as soon as Helena Bonham Carter's character back in London gets introduced.

Eventually all of the seemingly disparate subplots surrounding our main character come together in a supremely satisfying, and quite touching, way. Love and friendship triumphs over avaricious, coercive and abusive 'just business' attitudes. Although the film does deal with the casual cruelties that a life in the intelligence industry results in, with promises to support or help someone often being betrayed when the need to do so takes precedence.

Spoiler

Are the couple together at the end of the film because of a rekindling of an old romance, or because the woman's attempted rebuilding of a life has been exposed as a fraud and destroyed, leaving her no other choice?

Very different from Bond, but in some ways just as archetypal. I also particularly like that there are meaty and significant roles for women so far in this trilogy (along with Bonham Carter, Winona Ryder is excellent too), usually sidelined in films about conversations between groups of shifty men!

The third part of the trilogy, Salting The Battlefield is on the BBC next week, with a couple of scenes of Ewan Bremner's character and a tantalising glimpse of Ralph Fiennes' Blair-esque PM making a brief appearance in this film, but apparently returning to take centre stage for the final confrontation! (What will the PM do now that he has been undermined both morally and financially as his double-dealings have been exposed?)

Salting The Battlefield

A interesting conclusion to the 'Worricker Trilogy', this features a lot of safehouse-to-safehouse antics and a great scene of Bonham Carter being chased with all of her (literal and emotional!) baggage through London stations and back alleys until we get to a bittersweet departure where the more things change, the more they stay the same.

Having mentioned the meaty roles for women in the previous two episodes, Salting The Battlefield really ups the ante with really all of the men relegated to minor and supporting roles where they are usually either ineffectual or callously shifty and able to provide the small clue at the worst possible moment that screws everything up - the German security officer helping our bright-eyed young female agent track Worricker's movements, the pregnant daughter's feckless DJ boyfriend (introduced in Page Eight) who turns double agent, the newspaper bosses nice-but-dim live-in cook/toyboy, the overly cheerful backpacker on the Eurostar, the potential new PM having problems with an indiscreet husband in her private life, the spy who Ewan Bremner's character has to ditch, and so on.

The difference between Worricker and the PM is that Worricker at least has women around him while the PM has an almost entirely exclusively male circle, which seems to have fatally weakened him. Although I could have done without the slightly clichéd scene of the daughter calling to have it out with her father at entirely the worst possible time (having an argument in the middle of the street, no less), and Bonham Carter's insistence on blowing their cover by answering the phone! That seemed much too contrived after the earlier subtlety, although I guess it does help to distance Worricker from the women in his life again and prepare him for re-entry into the solitary spy world.

I particularly liked the climactic scene of welcoming a new future voter into the world coming after all of the political manoeuvring behind the lip service being paid to the electorate!

colinr0380 wrote:A interesting conclusion to the 'Worricker Trilogy', this features a lot of safehouse-to-safehouse antics...

You had me at "safehouse." Definitely going to import the trilogy with my next Amazon U.K. order.

One of the best things about these recent films is that, along with the recent death of Tony Benn, it inspired me to watch the 1989 After Dark debate on the secret services with a fresh eye to the relationship between a regularly in flux government, the secret services acting with or without recourse to government, collusion or gagging of the press and the passive and generally disinterested electorate. While it is of course a little dated now (dealing with then current issues of Noriega, Sinn Fein having the 'oxygen of publicity' removed from them, the murders on Gibraltar and so on), it is fascinating just how many of the issues discussed are still applicable to many of today's debates, and I would highly recommend giving this programme a watch either before or after this trilogy of films. The moments when Benn and Lord Dacre clash are particularly fascinating.

I've finally caught up with the trilogy in the past few days and want to thank colinr for his enthusiastic write-ups above, which are hard to disagree with and without which I'm not sure these would even have been on my radar. (It's different on this side of the pond, where PBS's Masterpiece Theater is something your mom watches even if you're no spring chicken yourself.) Anyway, the films really are first-rate dramatic storytelling and essential spy fiction. Hare's impressed me before here and there -- especially with Wetherby, a strange little film that I caught half of on cable one night a few years ago and couldn't stop thinking about -- but this work is in an altogether different league, just as affecting but also way more accessible and unabashedly narrative. As good as these films are on their own and together as a trilogy, as nice an ending as they've got now, I'd almost still rather see the continuing adventures of Johnny Worricker. Bill Nighy's not too old yet, so I hope Hare's at least open to the possibility.