j* movie reviews 2020

Red Joan (2018)

The premise is excellent but the execution a little pink.

So a Granny gets arrested for her past life of espionage and treason. I'm puzzled for the whole film about who the actor who plays her son is... was he on Neighbours once and was he related to Karl Kennedy? I imdb-ed after, and he was Patrick in Coupling, only one of the funniest Brit-coms there has ever been. Red Joan is not funny though.

Because the arrested Granny is played by Judi Dench I kept feeling like this was a weird James Bond side story where we find out that M was not all she seemed. Most of the film is actually the Granny's flashbacks as she, presumably, recounts the story of her youth in an interrogation room.

She's a nerdy science student in a lab dominated by men and I'm excited at the STEMinist prospects. Then she's in love, and the love turns her communist, and there's war at foot or at stake or in the past or the present or coming. Russia is good or maybe bad depending who you ask. And she's in love, and the guy she loves is a communist so she becomes one too.

She also becomes a nuclear physicist working on the development of the nuclear bomb, the one that is going to have the Union Jack painted on the top, rather than the stars and stripes. The relationship is off and on and off and on, and the nukes are off and on and off and on. She's on a boat. She's in Canada. She's having an affair with her supervisor. She's in Canada and the hot communist boy is there... but he only wants her for her... for her nuclear secrets. There's a missing mink coat and this is a big issue.

England is sharing secrets with Canada. Canada would share secrets with the USA but USA doesn't trust them. No-one trusts Russia except England. Then USA drops bombs on Japan. It's all complex, and as in war, so in the weird and twisty relationships portrayed. The married man getting divorced. The cousins who aren't. The child in the photo with the concerning date on the back. The gay-heterosexuals or heterosexual-gays... I don't know, spy sexuality gets so confusing. Red Sparrow definitely did a better job of explaining that.

The whole movie is jumping between Granny and her younger self and it gets a bit dull. And I really felt for not-Patrick when he gets over-dramatically upset and then shut down... because you know it must be super annoying when the thing you're arguing with your mother about is nuclear war and you've only just found out she's not just an overqualified librarian, she's a nuclear physicist and she probably is right, even if she is a traitor and a pinko to boot.

Meh.

J* gives it 2 stars.