movie review red joan

A based-on-a-true-story spy thriller, Trevor Nunn ’s conventional yet sneakily absorbing “Red Joan” eases into the familiar mold of “ The Imitation Game ” at once. As it toggles between two separate eras, Nunn’s period piece frames its story by introducing us to the 80-something Joan Stanley ( Judi Dench ) first. She lives a quiet life in a British suburb and tends to the cookie-cutter demands of her uneventful days in the early 2000s. Except, this simple old woman (whose story is based on the real-life case of Southeast London’s Melita Norwood) doesn’t seem to be all that ordinary—soon enough, the British Secret Service pulls her out of her quiet retirement and arrests her on the grounds of treason. But did she really commit those crimes and give away Britain’s secrets to the Russians as a KGB spy in the 1930s?

The pull of “Red Joan”—an adaptation of Jennie Rooney’s bestselling novel by screenwriter Lindsay Shapero —oddly isn’t in the search and reveal of an answer to this question. Admittedly, the expected attributes of a slick espionage thriller (like globe-trotting mystique and heart-pumping moments of suspense) aren’t great in number here. Instead, Nunn’s film works better as a period melodrama and I don’t mean this as a slight at all. Unapologetically feminine in the vein of Lone Scherfig ’s overlooked gem “ Their Finest ,” “Red Joan” resolves into a genuine study of an intelligent and ideologically budding young woman. As the old Joan settles into an interrogation session in a drab room (and repeatedly denies every accusation), the film’s lengthy flashbacks chart Joan’s opinionated past in thoughtful increments. Nunn swiftly takes us back in time to 1938, when Joan (a gracefully convincing Sophie Cookson ) was a green but genius physics student at Cambridge, grabbing onto new inspirations and expanding her political horizon while growing into her sexuality.

The initial catalyst to Joan’s awakening enters her life through an open window. To work around the strict curfew of her dorm, the confident Sonia (Tereza Srbova) climbs into Joan’s room with movie-star glamour and in due course, introduces Joan to her fiery cousin Leo ( Tom Hughes ), a dedicated communist like herself. Allured by their world of ideas around societal justice—and equally swept away by the noisemaker Leo, who patronizingly calls her “my little comrade”—Joan joins in their meetings and rallies against Hitler. The advancing timeline gently pushes Leo out of the picture and introduces a new partner-in-crime/love-interest for Joan, the gentlemanly professor Max Davis ( Stephen Campbell Moore ). Working out of a government laboratory and eventually becoming lovers during a perilous cross-Atlantic trip, the duo shares a joint view of the world but differs in their respective implementations. Further muddying the waters is Max’s marriage and inability to get a divorce from his wife.

It would be too easy to dismiss the romantic entanglements of “Red Joan” as fluff, but along with screenwriter Shapero, Nunn treats Joan’s affairs with the respect they deserve, while never losing sight of her as an intellectual. A virgin until she gets involved with Max—thankfully, the film doesn’t brush over a very crucial sex scene—Joan matures in her dealings with men, learning about both male entitlement and masculine nurturing. In other words, we stay within Joan’s womanly point of view throughout and even halfway understand the basis of her unlawful actions when she finally admits them to both her son and the stone-faced interrogators.  

Turns out, Joan didn’t just pass on her country’s nuclear secrets in the innocent name of devotion—in reality, she took up an ideological agenda entirely of her own after seeing the catastrophic atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She had thought it was only with access to equal information could the superpowers be on balance with each other, and stopped from such disastrous actions in the future. While this reasoning doesn’t seem to hold much historical accuracy, it makes sense within the context of a sound film that commendably insists on differentiating a woman’s inexperience from naïveté—“Red Joan” doesn’t burden its female protagonist with the latter.  

Capably lensed by cinematographer Zac Nicholson with a focus on the period’s earthy colors and textures and costumed to perfection by Charlotte Walter (who also dressed “Their Finest” with the same level of attention to the era’s knitwear and suiting), “Red Joan” leaves a lasting impression mostly with its flashback scenes. While Judi Dench is flawless in bringing time-spanning depth to her melancholic character (with accidental nods to her infamous “ M ” persona), her contemporary segments are comparably bland by narrative design. Uneven it may be, “Red Joan” still emanates a memorable essence, one that’s refreshingly and believably feminine.  

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to  RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

• Judi Dench as Joan Stanley
• Sophie Cookson as Young Joan Stanley
• Tereza Srbová as Sonya
• Laurence Spellman as Patrick Adams
• Tom Hughes as Leo
• George Fenton
• Kristina Hetherington
• Lindsay Shapero
• Trevor Nunn

Cinematographer

• Zac Nicholson

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‘Red Joan’ Review: I Spy, Reluctantly

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By Jeannette Catsoulis

• April 18, 2019

A story of Cambridge spies, atom-bomb secrets and a passionate affair between a demure Brit and a dashing Commie should steam up the screen and pop your popcorn. Or you would think so: but leave it to the feted British theater director Trevor Nunn to flatten the intrigue and dampen the lust that could have made “Red Joan” zing.

Nunn, however, can’t take all the blame for the terribly-proper tone and stodgy pacing. Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay ( adapted from Jennie Rooney’s 2013 novel and based on the real-life spy Melita Norwood) is an equal culprit, heavy on flashbacks and light on the seductiveness of hazardous ideas. Structured around the questioning of Joan Stanley (Judi Dench, reliably flawless), an English octogenarian charged with treason for leaking classified information to the Soviets, the movie strains to shed the claustrophobia of the interrogation room.

Slipping back to 1938, the story finds Joan (now played by Sophie Cookson) studying physics at Cambridge and falling under the spell of the glamorous Sonya (Tereza Srbova). She’ll keep falling when she meets the dangerously handsome Leo (Tom Hughes), a German Jew and Communist whose body interests her much more than his radical politics. Not until later, when she’s part of a secret project to build the bomb, do its fearsome capabilities persuade her of the upside of mutually assured destruction.

As a portrait of misplaced love and pacifist ideals, “Red Joan” isn’t terrible. Zac Nicholson’s images are soft as dust, but it’s the haze of fusty rooms and the free-floating sexism of the time. What should be breathless and urgent is instead polite and listless: if you can’t ignite sparks from an illicit bathroom assignation, then maybe espionage just isn’t your thing.

Rated R for extremely tasteful sex. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.

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Red Joan review: Judi Dench gives a typically subtle and deft performance as the OAP Soviet spy

Is she a hero or traitor the filmmakers can’t quite decide, article bookmarked.

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Dir: Trevor Nunn; Starring: Judi Dench , Sophie Cookson , Tereza Srbova, Tom Hughes. Cert 12A, 101 mins

Imagine that the little old lady pruning her roses in the next door garden is a KGB informer. That is the premise from which Red Joan starts. Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is an OAP living in quiet retirement in English suburbia. She has pictures of her grandchildren on the mantlepiece but no portraits of Lenin or Hammer and Sickle ornaments.

There is an obvious curiosity value in seeing Judi Dench, M in the James Bond movies, back on screen as a spy but Joan is nowhere near as formidable as the MI6 boss who used to give the orders to 007 . She is a frail and nervous woman who can’t bear to be in the glare of the media.

One reason Red Joan is so frustrating to watch is that the filmmakers can’t make up their minds about Joan. Is she a heroine who broke the Official Secrets Act because of her desire for global peace? Is she a traitor? Is she a naive fool, too easily swayed by her own sentimentality? An equivocal and tentative film portrays her as a mixture of all of these traits.

Director Trevor Nunn has worked before with Dench, perhaps most notably on the celebrated Royal Shakespeare production of Macbeth . There is little of the ferocity of that production here. Instead, the film trundles back and forth in time from 2000, when Joan is arrested and is being interrogated, to the late 1930s, when she was a fresh-faced undergraduate at Cambridge University.

Joan (played as a young woman by Sophie Cookson), arms herself with a hockey stick when an intruder appears at the window of her ground floor student rooms one evening. This is Sonya (Tereza Srbova), a sophisticated and decadent English Literature student from a mysterious eastern European background. Sonya introduces Joan to her communist friends, among them the charismatic Leo (Tom Hughes), to whom she is immediately attracted. He likes her too – but just not as much as he likes Stalin.

The 1930s was the period of Stalin’s show trials, mass starvation in Ukraine and extreme terror but none of the Oxbridge communists in Joan’s new circle of friends are willing to acknowledge any of this.

Joan is an infuriating figure whose behaviour is as hard to fathom at the end of the film as it is at the beginning. As an old woman, she tells her police interrogators that she has nothing to hide. As a young scientist, she sleepwalks into spying for the Soviet Union and doesn’t appear to have any crisis of conscience about her own behaviour whatsoever. She is as reticent and discreet in her private life as in her professional career. She has affairs and sometimes seems to be in love but is far too guarded to give in to anything approaching real passion. The result is a film which, although very handsomely made, has little dramatic intensity.

The filmmakers capture the extreme chauvinism of the era. Politicians and men in authority don’t take Joan seriously as a scientist. They think she is there to make the tea or that she will be more interested in new technology for tumble dryers than in building atom bombs. Their blinkered sexism allows her to steal secrets under their eyes without anyone noticing. Her own son, a successful lawyer, has no idea about her past. He thinks that she spent her career as a librarian. “It’s like I don’t know you,” he says in dismay as details of her spying spill out, expressing a bewilderment at her character that audiences may well share.

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Dench gives a typically subtle and deft performance as the OAP spy. She is far less imperious than when playing Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth I or M. Her role here is closer to the one in Philomena , as the diffident woman addressing dark events in her youth. Nervous and self-effacing, she deals with the contradictions in her past simply by ignoring them. Dench hints, though, that she is more worldly and wise than she is letting on.

Sophie Cookson plays the younger Joan as a shy but resilient figure with a surprising streak of ruthlessness. She may seem demure but she is ready to use blackmail and subterfuge to protect herself.

Like its heroine, Red Joan is a film without any clear identity. It isn’t an espionage thriller. Nor is it a love story. Nor is it a drama about a woman’s political awakening. Certain elements here feel very glib indeed. The idea that Joan (based on the real-life KGB mole Melita Norwood) somehow ensured peace in our time by feeding information about atom bomb research to the Soviet Union is absurd. “I am not a spy… I am not a traitor,” she protests to the media who assemble outside her front door. Her justifications for her behaviour ring very hollow and it is not at all clear that she believes in them herself.

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‘red joan’: film review | tiff 2018.

Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson portray the woman who passed the key to Britain’s atom bomb to the Soviet Union in Trevor Nunn’s drama, 'Red Joan,' inspired by the true story of KGB spy Melita Norwood.

By Deborah Young

Deborah Young

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A good old-fashioned British spy thriller in the scientific mold of Enigma , with a bewitching female heroine (or anti-heroine, if you will) played by the excellent actresses Judi Dench and (as her younger self) Sophie Cookson, Red Joan revisits the incredible real-life spy case of Melita Norwood. It is directed with a strong sense for character by Trevor Nunn, the former director of the Royal Shakespeare Co. whose rare excursions into film include woman-centered works like Hedda, Lady Jane and Twelfth Night: Or What You Will . After its Toronto premiere, this well-rounded piece has the cards in hand to find a happy niche with audiences.

Certainly, this isn’t the kind of adrenaline-pumping spy film laden with exploding buildings and the protagonist leaping out of skyscrapers. But it isn’t a sedate film either, and stakes couldn’t be higher: the balance of power between the West and the communist bloc at the end of WWII. Based on Jennie Rooney’s bestselling novel, Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay cleverly plays with the ostensible staidness of ordinary pensioner Joan Stanley (Dench), a woman in her 80s living a quiet suburban life who is abruptly arrested as a Soviet spy in the opening scene, set in 2000.   

The Bottom Line A taut old-school thriller with a modern heroine.

It’s also a story of ideals and self-sacrifice that seem impossibly distant in the current day and age. Though she claims to have been frightened out of her wits the entire time she was stealing classified documents from her laboratory, which was engaged in developing Britain’s atom bomb during the war, onscreen the young physicist Joan Stanley (Cookson) demonstrates nothing but courage, intelligence and furious conviction. As an elderly woman, she still has these qualities, which make her every inch a heroine, despite the sinking sensation that comes from seeing the bomb being handed to Stalin on a silver platter.

The story back-and-forths between the icy interrogation of the elderly Joan, who initially denies everything, and her memories of what really happened. Since much of the past is intertwined with her love affairs, it’s uncertain how much of the flashbacks she’s actually telling the police, leaving the audience with the satisfaction of knowing more than the investigators.

Joan is a mousy physics student at Cambridge in 1938 and still a virgin when glamorous fellow student Sonia (Czech actress Tereza Srbova) crawls through her window late one night to avoid the house mother. It’s a fateful meeting. Sonia and her dashing cousin Leo (Tom Hughes) are German Jews and committed communists. They draw Joan into their student meetings, which she attends primarily to spend time with Leo. He’s an idealist and political firebrand who leads rallies against Hitler and yearns for “a chance to rebuild civilization in a totally new way,” and it’s easy to see why the girl falls into his arms one night, with Sonia’s crafty encouragement. Though never named, the Cambridge Spy Ring, which included the infamous Kim Philby, hovers in the background.

The scene shifts to a secret government laboratory run by the charming professor Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore, The Child in Time ), who also rosily views the Soviet Union as allies but lacks Joan’s naivete and idealism. For him, scientists are not politicians; for her, they can’t ignore the practical effects of their work. She becomes his invaluable assistant and, eventually, his lover, complicated by the fact he’s married and his wife refuses to give him a divorce. The romantic bits of Red Joan are a far cry from James Bond-type serial sex with glamorous partners in evening dress. Shown from a young woman’s POV, Joan’s romances with Leo and Max are the believable affairs of a woman looking for love and marriage, not adventure.

As the older Joan remembers it, the British government agreed to set up a nuclear fission facility in Canada to keep up with American experiments on building a war-ending bomb. It is on their dangerous Atlantic crossing aboard a destroyer that Joan and Max realize their love for each other, though he’s too much the gentleman to pursue a doomed affair.

It wasn’t love or adventure that finally made Joan give in to Leo and Sonia’s pleading and begin passing state secrets to her handlers. As she tells the interrogators and her barrister son Nick (Ben Miles), who has incredulously joined her, it was the news that the Americans had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians. Unlike the real spy on whom she is based, who passed secret documents to the Soviets out of pure communist conviction, Joan reasons that the only way the world can be at peace is to create nuclear deterrence between the superpowers, putting the bomb in both their hands so neither can strike the other without disastrous consequences. This theory was first proposed in the late 1950s and it’s a stretch to believe it can be her motivation. On the other hand, Dench and Cookson portray Joan as being so smart in an unshowy English way that one can, for the space of the film, suspend disbelief and see how things turn out for her, Max, Leo and Sonia.

Casting is right on the mark and Dench’s dignified retired spy reverberates with her flashier role as M in Skyfall . Her stiff-necked son may think it all preposterous, but when the old lady fetches him a coffee in a Che Guevara mug, she gets a liberating laugh. And Cookson, who passes perfectly for Dench at 20 with the additional appeal of ripe youth and an infectious Lauren Bacall smile, makes a natural segue from her secret agent roles in the Kingsman films.

Zac Nicholson’s cinematography is warm and involving like production designer Cristina Casali’s quaint woody laboratories, as behooves the sub-genre of British spy yarns. George Fenton’s romantic score and Charlotte Walter’s charming costumes well describe the mood of the time.

Production company: Trademark Films Cast: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Stephen Campbell Moore, Tom Hughes Director: Trevor Nunn Screenwriter: Lindsay Shapero, based on Jennie Rooney’s novel Producer: David Parfitt Executive producers: Ivan Mactaggart, Tim Haslam, Hugo Grumbar, Zygi Kamasa, James Atherton, Jan Pace, Kelly E. Ashton, Karl Sydow Director of photography: Zac Nicholson Production designer: Cristina Casali Costume designer: Charlotte Walter Editor: Kristina Hetherington Music: George Fenton World sales: Embankment Films Venue: Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentation) 110 minutes

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Red Joan Reviews

Consider the overall picture, and you’re left with a flavourless film that fudges the food for thought it could’ve offered.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 14, 2024

For all the faults of editing and storytelling, Cookson still gives a striking performance.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Dec 7, 2020

Though the film tells an intriguing story, director Trevor Nunn's approach is bland while the movie's pace flirts with tedium throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4.0 | Nov 20, 2020

The result is a movie that might not ever be all that thrilling, but it is never anything other than watchable.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 15, 2020

Young Joan, old Joan, Red Joan, blue Joan -- it's all the same here.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 27, 2020

Red Joan takes an intriguing premise and dilutes it almost beyond recognition into a boring and poorly done romance. Unlike good spy movies, Nunn's dreary history lesson leaves you neither shaken nor stirred.

Full Review | Original Score: 2 / 5 | Jul 27, 2020

Red Joan is certainly a watchable curiosity, but as a piece of political discourse, it seems strangely ham-fisted and bland.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jul 21, 2020

A dull telling of a lively true spy yarn.

Full Review | Original Score: C | May 26, 2020

Every plot point and every character insight gets delivered with the same manufactured smoothness; the movie is naggingly bland in the way one associates with "respectable" British cinema.

Full Review | Mar 10, 2020

Red Joan feels like it was a middling British TV drama pilot that ran too long and they sold it as a movie instead.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jan 10, 2020

The lead actresses are both solid but the direction by Trevor Nunn is dull.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Dec 19, 2019

A spy movie lacking suspense. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 16, 2019

Lindsay Shapero's screenplay bases the spy figure on stereotypes and reduces her difficulties to her romantic relationships, gradually forgetting her complex personality. [Full Review in Spanish]

Its conventional if uneven structure keeps the tension mild despite subject matter rife with ethical questions and contemporary resonance.

Full Review | Sep 7, 2019

Perhaps Nunn tried to do a bit too much with this film, layering this woman's secret past with themes of feminist and anti-war sentiment. When the film focuses on the characters in the past, it builds a driving thriller tension...

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 29, 2019

What one perceives in this movie is a particular passivity and several errors in the development of suspense, melodrama, and almost any appeal related to the spy film, or even the biographical film. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 25, 2019

The music... is enough to keep the viewer's curiosity. [Full review in Spaniash]

Unintended silliness makes young Joan look foolish for being entranced by them, robbing her of agency when the film is desperate to prove the opposite.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 3, 2019

Red Joan itself is reportedly based on the story of Melita Norwood, who passed the Soviets' information on the West's nuclear development. Sadly, Norwood's Wikipedia page is more of a thrilling yarn than most of Red Joan.

Full Review | Jun 28, 2019

Joan Stanley's story of means and ends opens in 2000 rural Britain, where an elderly Joan is arrested and charged by MI5 with treason, an accusation she vehemently denies.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 21, 2019

Toronto Film Review: ‘Red Joan’

A London octogenarian’s hidden past as a spy for the USSR is exposed in this curiously flat drama.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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Trevor Nunn is not the first director to accrue both a glorious stage résumé and a paltry, pedestrian screen one. Still, given the talent involved, it’s disappointing that “Red Joan” does so little to change that — his first theatrical feature since a decent “Twelfth Night” adaptation 22 years ago is a would-be sweeping epic that instead turns out tweedy, dreary, and unconvincing.

Something was surely lost along the way as the real-life story of one Melita Norwood — a British civil servant of scant note until her pro-USSR espionage was revealed when she was an elderly retiree — turned into a 2014 novel by Jessica Rooney, then into this tepid film incarnation. Beyond all other intrigue, our heroine here proves an under-radar key player in shaping the power dynamics of the Cold War. So it’s dismaying that so little drama is wrung out of the tale, and that what we get too often feels like a cliché-riddled romantic pulp.

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You can’t fault Judi Dench or Sophie Cookson’s performances as the protagonist in late and early adulthood, respectively. But what had potential to strike a middle ground between “Hidden Figures” and “Another Country” instead feels like an unwise resuscitation of a 1940s script that might’ve had Madeleine Carroll tempted into betraying king and country by the insidious wiles of James Mason. Actually, that movie would have been fun — this one doesn’t embrace the creaky melodrama it nonetheless succumbs to, resulting in something that feels old at birth, and not in a charmingly retro way.

Popular on Variety

In 2000 suburban London, octogenarian widow Joan Stanley (Dench) is surprised by a knock at the door — even more so when it turns out that she’s under arrest for treason. It seems the death of an erstwhile colleague has somehow exposed her suspicious activities of decades before. Interrogated by government representatives, she denies all guilt but relates her story in flashbacks.

Reading physics at Cambridge just before World War 2, young Joan (Cookson) was a studious, mousy thing dazzled by the glamour of immigrant classmate Sonya (Tereza Srbova), then swept off her feet by the latter’s dreamy cousin Leo (Tom Hughes). Both are Jewish refugees from Germany with roots in Russia, involved in anti-fascist activism and the Communist Party.

Though she’s not entirely sure about that Stalin fellow, Joan proves fairly easy to recruit, both to the Party and Leo’s bed. When war breaks out and she’s drafted to assist Professor Max Davies (Stephen Campbell Moore) on a top-secret British equivalent to the Manhattan Project, it doesn’t take long for her “comrades” to beg she leak some classified intel for the benefit of Mother Russia.

Eventually it becomes clear we’re meant to believe Joan’s actions rose out of private conviction — she thought Soviets also having “the bomb” would prevent the major post-war powers from annihilating each other. But that conscience isn’t made vivid enough in a film that till then had suggested our heroine was simply a fool for love, bowled over by Leo’s heavy-lidded seduction tactics. (James Mason could indeed have pulled off a bag of tricks that look vain and silly on too-pretty Tom Hughes.) It would require a whole lot of chemistry for this high-risk passion to persuade us. Alas, there’s nary a spark between these performers, nor between Cookson and Moore once that professional relationship gets personal.

Never mind that Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay keeps dropping unsubtle hints about how brilliant and unappreciated Joan is in a scientific boys’ club, denied credit even when she solves their problems for them. Somehow none of this seems convincing — without presumably meaning to, the movie renders its central character the kind of hapless pawn at which people used to dismissively cluck the words, “Silly woman!” Dench, whose scenes are nearly all in one room, can’t make much more of Senior Joan than a bewildered old lady whose beliefs remain as frustratingly vague as they did half a century earlier.

“Red Joan” is uninspired on all levels, with credible-enough period atmosphere but little in the way of style or scale to give this oddly flat tale — odd because it involves sex, spying, scandal, and death, none of which bring excitement here — an aesthetic lift. The most you can say about the film’s look and George Fenton’s original score are that they are conventionally workmanlike.

The source novel appears to have taken considerable fictive liberties with Melita Norwood’s actual history. One suspects the latter might still make a good film one day, and that this one won’t be remembered long enough to provide an obstacle.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 7, 2018. Running time: 109 MIN.

• Production: (U.K.) A Quickfire presentation, in association with Embankment Films, Twickenham Studios, of a Trademark Films production, in association with Cambridge Pictures Co. (Int'l sales: Embankment, London.) Producer: David Parfitt. Co-producers: Alice Dawson, Ivan Mactaggart. Executive producers: Karl Sydow, Tim Haslam, Hugo Grumbar, Zygi Kamasa, James Atherton, Jan Pace, Kelly E. Ashton.
• Crew: Director: Trevor Nunn. Screenplay: Lindsay Shapero, based on the novel by Jennie Rooney. Camera (color, HD): Zac Nicholson. Editor: Kristina Hetherington. Music: George Fenton.
• With: Judi Dench, Stephen Campbell Moore, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes, Ben Miles, Nina Susanna, Tereza Srbova.

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Review: ‘Red Joan’ presents Judi Dench in a morally complex role

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“Red Joan” is a traditional production, polished as brass and as old-school diverting as a film starring Judi Dench and directed by Trevor Nunn would have to be.

But there is also a kind of hollowness at its center, a tone that is more conventional than compelling. “Red Joan’s” time frame and its loosely based-on-fact story line have intrinsic interest, but not all of that potential is realized.

Though Dench is “Red Joan’s” marquee attraction, she appears as Joan Stanley only in the film’s contemporary framing device, introduced in 2000 as a quintessentially British elderly party carefully tending to a garden of brightly blooming flowers.

No sooner are the gardening shears put away, however, than there comes a stern knock on the door and members of the national security-focused Special Branch come bursting in, arresting Joan for 27 breaches of the Official Secrets Act and accusing her of traitorous activities dating back to 1938 and her days as a student at Cambridge.

Joan’s solicitor son Nick (Ben Miles, Group Capt. Peter Townsend in “The Crown”) angrily insists there must be some mistake, his kindly old mum could not have played fast and loose with national security.

But as the title indicates, there is soon very little doubt that pass secrets Joan did. The question becomes not whether the accusations are true but how and why the deed was done.

Though older Joan periodically reappears to explain herself (“The world was so different then, you have no idea”), much of the story unfolds in flashbacks set between 1938 and 1947, and here Joan is very capably played by Sophie Cookson .

“Red Joan’s” script, adapted by Lindsay Shapero from a novel by Jennie Rooney, is based on the exploits of Melita Norwood , a real-life British atomic spy unmasked at a great age, but a glance at the facts shows that the resemblance is far from exact and that the needs of contemporary audiences influenced the film as much as history.

Director Nunn came across Rooney’s novel in a book shop. Though largely known as a prolific producer and director of theater, including “Les Misérables,” something in this story of innocence and subterfuge intrigued Nunn enough to take it on.

After Joan is arrested, she submits to a lengthy government interrogation, and her answers are the cues for the film’s extensive flashbacks, starting with her introduction in 1938 as an earnest physics major and all around science nerd.

Quite by chance (isn’t it always that way), Joan runs into the scintillating Sonya (Tereza Srbova), an energetic and outgoing refugee from both Russia and Germany, the first Jew she’s ever met and a woman whose radical politics and cavalier disregard for love come as a shock.

Joan tags along with Sonya to film night at the local Communist Party HQ, where she gets the chance to both watch Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” and exchange significant glances with Sonya’s cousin Leo (Tom Hughes).

Leo turns out to be even more of a radical activist than Sonya, completely believing that communism will remake the world in a more just way. Soon enough, he and Sonya, whom he calls “my little comrade,” are inseparable.

Things are busy for Joan professionally as well, as she is hired to work with handsome professor Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore) on the innocuously labeled but very hush-hush “tube alloys project.”

That turns out to be the U.K.’s version of America’s Manhattan Project, as Britain is loath to be left behind in the worldwide race to weaponize the splitting of the atom.

Though Leo disappears from Joan’s life for big chunks of time, he reappears periodically to pump her for information about her new job, which he has somehow figured out is about nuclear weaponry.

“The Russians deserve to know,” Leo insists, adding that possession of the bomb is essential to the survival of the revolution he believes is the world’s best hope for justice.

In constructing this scenario, clearly aware that Joan’s spying was considered treasonous once it was exposed, the filmmakers have made sure to counterbalance that by treating her with the utmost respect.

For one thing, “Red Joan” insists it was Joan’s familiarity with physics, not just her office skills and attractiveness, that got her hired for the project.

And the film emphasizes that her eventual decision to share information with the Soviets had nothing to do with the romantic pressure Leo put on her but was rather motivated by her own idealistic belief that nuclear parity would serve the cause of world peace.

But it’s not only its generic elements and sporadic listlessness that hampers “Red Joan,” it’s that the film’s attempts to convince us of the rightness of her actions don’t succeed either.

To believe that giving the bomb to Russia was the right thing to do is to both ignore the nature of Stalin’s regime (which the film largely does) and to believe that the more countries that have the bomb, the safer we all are. It’s a hard argument to make, and “Red Joan” is not up to making it convincingly.

-------------

Running time: 1 hour, 50 minutes

Playing: Starts April 19, the Landmark, West Los Angeles

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Movie Review – Red Joan (2019)

April 14, 2019 by Robert Kojder

Red Joan , 2019.

Directed by Trevor Nunn. Starring Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson, Tom Hughes, Tereza Srbová, Laurence Spellman, Kevin Fuller, Ciarán Owens, Stephen Campbell, and Moore Ben Miles.

The story of Joan Stanley, who was exposed as the KGB’s longest-serving British spy.

Scientists and physics experts being exploited for the purposes of war generally make for fascinating character studies, and on paper the story of Joan Stanley/ Red Joan (directed by Trevor Nunn from a script written by Lindsay Shapero, but most importantly inspired by the life of Melita Norwood) appears to be a worthwhile exploration of a relatively unknown figure. Rather than functioning as a spy movie about a betrayal of one’s country, it operates on the basis of morality and doing what one feels is right to prevent the very makers of catastrophic destruction from being eager to drop atomic bombs on one another willy-nilly. There’s also promise in casting the great Judi Dench and the rising Sophie Cookson playing the parts of Joan at respective points in her life.

Unfortunately, it’s not long before the negative vibes come settling in, as Red Joan adopts an uninspired and bland formula of flipping between past and present as present-day Joan is interrogated for her past crimes following the passing of an important colleague, with each inquiry allowing the film to dive right into the past and show things from her own young and naïve and unknowing (at this point in time the verdict on Joseph Stalin was somewhat up in the air) perspective. As the sessions go on, health problems arise for present-day Joan, rendering the whole thing one terrible cliché.

However, a far greater crime than anything this altered historical figure ever did is how badly the material here lets Sophie Cookson down, who is fine in the popular Kingsman franchise to the point of showing promise for leading roles, even if they are the blandest style of biopics. Instead of really getting into the psyche of this woman and the complex choices she had to make while working for the KGB, Red Joan gets so caught up in her romantic life that it feels like the choices she makes come from love and not the greater good of the world. Obviously, having a fling with a communist party sympathizer and another passionate relationship with one of her superiors are going to influence her decisions on some level, but they don’t need to be the entire movie. By the time Judi Dench is professing to her son (who has been kept in the dark about all of this) that she never betrayed her country and that she was trying to make the world a better place, it rings hollow considering so much of the movie is fixated on the on-and-off intricacies between her and her significant others.

There’s also a bafflingly unnecessary shot of nudity from Sophie Cookson that feels like some sort of desperate attempt to make a few more bucks at the box office (not that the movie is going to make much, but still). Rarely do I ever harp on these things, but there are three moments of physical intimacy in the film with two of them being implied sexual intercourse that cuts to the next day before anyone can undress. Meanwhile, one of them cuts to a gratuitous 2-3 seconds shot of Sophie Cookson nude before cutting once again to the next day. Maybe the filmmakers shot an entire sex scene that they felt was not needed but also didn’t want to go to waste, but if that’s the case why not just show the whole thing? A 101-minute movie would only be extended by another minute. Also, it’s not a prudish thing at all; it’s just awkwardly edited to the point of worth questioning the intentions behind it.

That might only be a small problem within the direction though, as the main blunder with Red Joan is that it’s just not very engaging. The story of this woman is interesting and the events that unfold are mildly intriguing, but it’s also just coasting along from plot point to plot point with little pop in terms of narrative execution or cinematic flair. It’s about as exciting as reading Wikipedia, which is frustrating considering the standoffish nature and harrowing results of building atomic bombs should generate concern and emotion. Not even the small scene of young Joan watching footage of the Hiroshima bomb dropping elicits any kind of reaction; it’s another groan-worthy amateur hour directorial decision.

It also must be said that the present day//flashback juxtapositioning doesn’t add anything to the character, mostly because Judi Dench is going through the motions while Sophie Cookson, despite being a letdown at every narrative juncture, is looking for anything to cling onto and get us invested in the character and story. She does is find a job as anyone can with such little to work with; hopefully in the future, she receives better starring roles for more tantalizing projects. Red Joan is not a horrible movie by any means, but one with its focus in all the wrong places and containing no urgency to anything going on.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★

Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check  here  for new reviews, friend me on Facebook, follow my  Twitter  or  Letterboxd , check out my personal non-Flickering Myth affiliated  Patreon , or email me at [email protected]

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Red Joan Review

19 Apr 2019

On paper, Red Joan seems to tick all the necessary boxes for an exciting spy movie: there’s betrayal, sex scandals and shocking deaths. And yet, as directed by Trevor Nunn, this tale of a British civil servant selling secrets to the Russians is bland and conventional when it should be suspenseful and provocative.

Adapted from Jennie Rooney’s novel that’s based on the real life story of Melita Norwood, Red Joan opens with the arrest of retired librarian Joan Stanley ( Dench ) after the death of a colleague reveals her suspicious ties to the KGB. As she recounts her story to the authorities we flit between a present-day interrogation room and 1930s Cambridge as a younger, initially timid Joan ( Sophie Cookson ) is all too easily recruited by her Communist classmate Sonya (Tereza Srbova) and her cousin Leo (Tom Hughes), whom she falls for. Later, when Joan joins a top-secret British programme to build nuclear weaponry, her comrades persuade her to leak classified intel to Russia.

That we have to wait until Red Joan ’s final moments to get a sense of its protagonist’s calculating and ultimately prescient motivations for betraying her country — she believed if Russia also had a nuke it would stop the superpowers from bombing each other — speaks to the flaws in Lindsay Shapero’s screenplay. Instead of exploring that underdeveloped thread we get a romance that’s more tepid than passionate, and indeed, it’s easier to believe that Joan did it out of love given that she falls for Leo’s unconvincing seductive tactics time and time again.

While the narrative leaves much to be desired, the two central performances are at least beyond reproach. The back and forth transitions do well to create a full picture of Joan, and while Dench is not given a lot to work with she gives her a likeable earnestness that shines through. The bulk of the screen time falls to Cookson and she acquits herself well, both convincing as a younger Dench and a shy student who slowly comes into her own.

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Common Sense Media Review

Slow-burning WWII spy drama raises thoughtful questions.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Red Joan is a fact-based drama about an elderly British woman (Judi Dench) who's arrested for spying for the KGB during World War II. The development of the atomic bomb is at the center of the story; characters discuss what the power to make such a bomb means, and one watches news…

Why Age 13+?

Nuclear weapons are at the heart of Joan's spying; viewers hear their power disc

Characters kiss passionately before falling into bed or dashing behind closed do

Language is infrequent but includes "damn," "hell."

Many characters smoke; adults go to bars and drink at dinners and parties, but n

Any Positive Content?

Explores idea of whether noble/selfless goals justify illegal/morally complex ac

Joan is a strong, principled person; though viewers may not agree with her princ

Violence & Scariness

Nuclear weapons are at the heart of Joan's spying; viewers hear their power discussed, see news footage of the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombings, with brief visuals of people injured by the radiation. One character slaps another during an emotional conversation. A character is given a poison amulet; it's implied that she should use it to kill herself if she's caught. A character discovers a loved one hanging by his neck, dead. She assumes he's died by suicide but learns later that he may have been murdered. Viewers see his blank, dead face, his body hanging in silhouette.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Characters kiss passionately before falling into bed or dashing behind closed doors; in one scene, characters have sex with motions and moaning -- a man is shown shirtless, and then the characters are seemingly nude in bed together (no graphic nudity). Illicit and extramarital affairs play a part in the story.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Many characters smoke; adults go to bars and drink at dinners and parties, but no one acts drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Messages

Explores idea of whether noble/selfless goals justify illegal/morally complex actions. Joan is moved to participate in espionage by the dropping of nuclear bombs in Japan. Themes of honor, compassion, and courage are clear, though not every viewer will agree that Joan's actions were reasonable/justified.

Positive Role Models

Joan is a strong, principled person; though viewers may not agree with her principles, it's hard to disagree that her convictions arise from them. However, she's also defined largely by her relationship with various men, and she's often treated with disdain/scorn by male characters. Many characters have dual motives: Both Sonya and Leo seem to be Joan's friends but frequently press her to do things she's uncomfortable with. Family bonds in the Stanley family are strong, though tested by difficult times.

Parents need to know that Red Joan is a fact-based drama about an elderly British woman ( Judi Dench ) who's arrested for spying for the KGB during World War II. The development of the atomic bomb is at the center of the story; characters discuss what the power to make such a bomb means, and one watches news footage about the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (images of cities in ruins and pale, hairless people suffering radiation poisoning). There are also many scenes that deal with suicide, including one in which one character finds another hanging by his neck: His body is seen in silhouette, and the camera lingers on his dead face. Language is infrequent and mild ("damn," "hell"), and sexuality is muted: Most sex is represented by kissing and the removal of a layer of clothing. In one scene, a couple has sex -- with motions and movement -- but viewers only see the man's bare chest and then the couple in bed, seemingly nude. A photo shows two men kissing. Many characters smoke (accurate for the era); they also drink at dinner or in pubs, but no one acts drunk. A strong, principled woman is the main character, but viewers may disagree with her principles as well as her actions. Nonetheless, themes of compassion and courage are clear, and, for many, Joan will be a role model despite her (unpopular in democratic countries) political leanings. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

Based on Jennie Rooney's same-named novel (and on the real-life case of "granny spy" Melita Norwood), RED JOAN stars Judi Dench as Joan Stanley, an elderly woman accused of selling British nuclear intelligence to the USSR during World War II. Could this sedate grandmotherly type really be a longtime KGB spy? As Joan remembers the decades-old events that led to her arrest, the film goes back in time to the 1940s, when the idealistic young Joan ( Sophie Cookson ) met glamorous socialists Sonya (Tereza Srbova) and Leo ( Tom Hughes ) at her university, sending her life in an unexpected direction.

Is It Any Good?

This drama is slow-burning enough to get mistaken for boring, but patient viewers will find an intriguing, unique dilemma at the center of this ripped-from-the-headlines spy story. It's easy enough to condemn Joan (and the woman who inspired her character, Melita Norwood) at face value -- she is, after all, a British citizen who gave her country's wartime enemy the intelligence it needed to make an atomic bomb. But the more we learn about Joan, the more sympathetic she becomes. Deeply committed to an idealistic strain of communism, her motive is only to level the worldwide playing field. If everyone knows how to make a bomb, she reasons, everyone will be too afraid of reprisal to actually detonate one.

Playing a woman whose fiery politics have cooled after many decades of living an unremarkable life, Dench, as always, is impossible to look away from. But her scenes mostly take place in gray interrogation rooms or around her suburban house. Cookson, meanwhile -- beautifully dressed in perfect period-correct costumes -- is given much more to do: She holds signs at political rallies, learns how to evade fellow spies (go into a "lady shop," because "no man will follow you in there"), and has passionate affairs with desperate men. Yes, it's all a lot quieter than most spy movies; there's nary a chase or a shoot-out, and one of the more dramatic moments of Red Joan involves a mink coat. Instead of explosions, there are conversations. And instead of murders, there are betrayals. But instead of easy answers, there are complex, nuanced questions, and a treat for a certain type of film watcher.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about people whose work involves breaking traditional rules. How can you tell when you stop being one of the "good guys"? Is it OK to break rules if it's done in aid of a greater good?

Do the characters' jobs and lives look like fun? Why or why not? Would you like to be a spy? Does Red Joan make spying look attractive? Scary? Boring?

How do the characters in Red Joan demonstrate compassion and courage ? Why are these important character strengths ?

Movie Details

• In theaters : April 19, 2019
• On DVD or streaming : October 8, 2019
• Cast : Judi Dench , Sophie Cookson , Stephen Boxer
• Director : Trevor Nunn
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : IFC
• Genre : Drama
• Topics : History
• Character Strengths : Compassion , Courage
• Run time : 101 minutes
• MPAA rating : R
• MPAA explanation : brief sexuality/nudity
• Last updated : March 13, 2023

Did we miss something on diversity?

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RED JOAN – Review

Judi Dench plays a widowed retired librarian living a quiet suburban life who is suddenly arrested for spying in the Cold War, in the fact-inspired RED JOAN. Director Trevor Nunn based his film on a shocking real spy case, when an innocent-seeming older woman was arrested by the British Secret Service for passing classified information about the atomic bomb secrets to the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War. Told in part as the harmless-looking older woman is interrogated and in flashback as a young physics student recruited for the war effort, Joan Stanley relives the events of her life that led to the accusation.

The screenplay by Lindsay Shapiro is more inspired by than based on the sensational story of real spy Melita Norwood, an unassuming 87-year-old suburban widow arrested for espionage in 1999. In RED JOAN, the fictional character is named Joan Stanley. The film toggles back and forth between the octogenarian Joan, played by Judi Dench, and her younger self, played by Sophie Cookson. The spy tale is well-acted and well-shot, filled with fine period details and locations. The problem, for at least some audiences, is that the film shifts tone as it shifts between its present and past. In its present, it is a subtle character study unfolding as the older Joan is interrogated, while in the past, it is steamy spy thriller, which makes is feel a bit like two different films. In both time periods, the film presents a complicated picture of a women grappling with complex emotions, divided loyalties and confused ideas about patriotism, in a world that seems on the verge of nuclear war.

The flashback story takes us to Cambridge University before World War II, where young student Joan (Cookson) meets Leo (Tom Hughes, who played Prince Albert on BBC’s “Victoria”), a handsome young Russian/German Jewish refugee. Joan is a quiet, gifted physics student who is drawn to Leo and his adventurous, high-spirited cousin Sonya (Tereza Sbrova), because they are just so much fun. Joan accompanies the two charismatic newcomers to the Commie film screenings and events they organize on campus, less because of any interest in communism than her fondness for them. Joan quickly becomes fast friends with Sonya, and eventually falls into a passionate affair with the seductive but elusive Leo.

As the older Joan points out in the film, in those pre-World War II days, communism or the Soviet Union were not seen as threatening, and there was even a little fad of interest in the 1930s. As World War II breaks out, the Soviet Union becomes a British ally. Although Joan’s interest in her friends’ communist ideas has long faded, her personal history ties to the Russians and their circle remain and complicate her life.

If RED JOAN had stuck to the story in the past, it could have developed into a steamy, exciting spy thriller. But Trevor Nunn, a director steeped in theater, has other plans for this film beyond popcorn-munching entertainment. The film returns to the present periodically, which gives us more time with the always-wonderful Judi Dench and also allows her character to describe her rather complicated, even confused, reasons for doing what she did. A key point is her concern about preventing another war, as she has the misguided if well-meaning idea that peace has a better chance if both sides have the bomb.

It is a idea discussed by several characters in the flashback sequences but the anti-war theme is not the only one that runs through the film. A strong feminist aspect also emerges, as Joan’s brilliance in physics is consistently ignored by the men working on the war effort, who think she is better suited to typing up their research. Only Max (Stephen Campbell Moore), the head of the British atom bomb project, recognizes Joan’s remarkable gift for physics and recruits her as his assistant. But she still does the typing and filing.

As the atomic bomb project advances, things get complicated for Joan, both romantically and ethically. At first, the team works along side the Americans in the race to beat the Germans to the atomic bomb, but then the Americans stop sharing research. The British project continues anyway but in a more complicated political atmosphere. a situation that becomes even more complex after the war. The shifting political alliances worry Joan, who sees the Russians go from allies to adversaries, and the Americans go from collaborative to secretive about atomic research.

Even though her work takes her from England to Canada, she is still periodically contacted by Sonya, Leo and their commie friends, with Leo pressing her hard to share information despite her repeated refusals. Meanwhile, in the story’s present, the older Joan grapples with the pressure of the interrogation, and secrets she kept from her grown son, some due to the Official Secrets Act and some not. The son reels as information about his mother’s past surfaces.

Perhaps Nunn tried to do a bit too much with this film, layering this woman’s secret past with themes of feminist and anti-war sentiment. When the film focuses on the characters in the past, it builds a driving thriller tension, as events push Joan to the emotional edge. In the present, the story is more narrow and relational, focusing on the character’s inner turmoil and her relationship with her shocked son. The shift in style is sometimes jarring, making RED JOAN feel like two different films rather a single story, despite the superb acting, well-crafted production values and good intentions.

RED JOAN opens Friday, May 10, at Landmark’s Plaza Frontenac Cinema.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars

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Red Joan Movie Review: Analyzing its Portrayal of Espionage and Betrayal

The recently released film, “Red Joan,” has been making waves in the movie industry with its intriguing portrayal of espionage and betrayal. Based on a true story, the movie follows the life of Joan Stanley, a British civil servant who later becomes entangled in a web of secrets and deceit. In this article, we will delve into the various aspects of “Red Joan” that contribute to its gripping narrative and explore how it effectively showcases the themes of espionage and betrayal.

I. Historical Accuracy and Context

One of the most notable elements of “Red Joan” is its commitment to historical accuracy and context. Set during World War II and the Cold War era, the film provides viewers with a glimpse into the political climate of those times. The meticulous attention to detail in recreating settings, costumes, and props adds an authentic touch to the narrative.

Furthermore, “Red Joan” draws inspiration from real-life events surrounding Melita Norwood, a British civil servant who was exposed as a Soviet spy in 1999 after decades of espionage. This connection to actual historical events adds depth to the film’s portrayal of espionage and betrayal.

II. Complex Characters

The strength of any espionage thriller lies in its characters, and “Red Joan” delivers on this front. The protagonist, Joan Stanley (played by Judi Dench), is portrayed as an ordinary woman caught up in extraordinary circumstances. Her transformation from an innocent young scientist to a spy for Russia is both compelling and thought-provoking.

The supporting characters also play significant roles in driving the narrative forward. Tom Hughes delivers a stunning performance as Leo Galich (the fictionalized version of Melita Norwood’s handler), adding layers to his character that heighten the sense of intrigue throughout the film.

III. Tension-filled Plot

Espionage films are known for their intricate plots filled with twists and turns, and “Red Joan” is no exception. The film masterfully builds tension as it gradually unravels the secrets that Joan holds. Flashbacks to her younger self during World War II are skillfully interwoven with the present-day narrative, keeping viewers on the edge of their seats.

The plot of “Red Joan” also explores the moral dilemmas faced by its characters. The film raises thought-provoking questions about loyalty, patriotism, and the blurred lines between right and wrong in times of conflict. These thematic elements contribute to the overall impact of the movie, making it more than just a typical spy thriller.

IV. Cinematic Brilliance

Apart from its engaging storyline, “Red Joan” also shines in terms of its cinematic brilliance. Director Trevor Nunn’s visual storytelling techniques are on full display throughout the film. The use of lighting and cinematography effectively captures the mood and atmosphere of each scene, enhancing the viewing experience.

Additionally, the performances by the cast elevate “Red Joan” to another level. Judi Dench’s portrayal of Joan Stanley is captivating and emotionally nuanced, showcasing her talent as one of Britain’s finest actresses. The chemistry between Dench and Hughes adds an extra layer of complexity to their characters’ relationship.

In conclusion, “Red Joan” is a must-watch film for fans of espionage thrillers and historical dramas alike. Its commitment to historical accuracy, complex characters, tension-filled plot, and cinematic brilliance make it a standout movie in its genre. By delving into themes such as espionage and betrayal with finesse, this film leaves a lasting impression on viewers long after they leave the theater.

This text was generated using a large language model, and select text has been reviewed and moderated for purposes such as readability.

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Red Joan (2018)

• User Reviews
• firstly Joan was a traitor, it cannot be for any individual to decide what a foreign country/enemy should know or not know. The movie suggests that 50 years of peace justifies her decision but this is a leap too far. Hiroshima is an example where using the bomb cost lives but saved millions of others in conventional war.
• Secondly Joan was groomed both intellectually, romantically and sexually. This was tawdry manipulation from the start and she was a naive idiot. This was revealed very early on in the movie, and yet this silly romantic thread continued.

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Despite the enlivening presence of Judi Dench, this sorta-spy drama is a drab disappointment.

Time Out says

This musty Cold War thriller begins with Judi Dench’s octogenarian Joan Stanley dragged in for questioning over long-ago espionage charges. She doesn’t seem the sort to betray her country and despite the Che Guevara mug in her kitchen, hardly seems like a diehard ideologue. Did this granny really go full Kim Philby and spill Britain’s secrets to the Russians? Has ‘M’ finally gone rogue?

Based on the true story of Wolverhampton’s Melita Norwood, ‘Red Joan’ tries to keep us guessing. Shifting between the elderly Stanley and her 1930s self (Sophie Cookson), it shows her falling in with young radicals at Cambridge, becoming a physicist and having moral dilemmas over the Allies’ creation of the A-bomb. But writer-director Trevor Nunn is hamstrung by a structural flaw: whatever the truth in the charges, we know the younger Stanley wasn’t caught. Consequently, it’s all about as tense as a gentle punt down the Cam.

Instead, the film tries to get into Joan’s head as she navigates tea rooms, labs and political rallies, struggling with her conscience. There are love affairs – with Tom Hughes’s Russian firebrand and Stephen Campbell Moore’s earnest scientist – but it’s standard period fare, with a few observations on sexism sprinkled in as Joan toils to prove herself in a man’s world.

Dench does bring edge to her scenes. Few actors can shift from withering to wounded like that in one flicker of the eyes. As she shrinks under the grilling, you’ll find yourself forgetting she once gave 007 the same treatment.

Release Details

• Release date: Friday 19 April 2019
• Duration: 110 mins

Cast and crew

• Director: Trevor Nunn
• Screenwriter: Lindsay Shapero
• Stephen Campbell Moore
• Sophie Cookson

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Is Red Joan a true story? How Melita Norwood inspired Judi Dench’s portrayal of Joan Stanley

The new film is actually based on one of the most surprising spy stories in british history.

Red Joan came to cinemas last week (19 April), and while it failed to win over many critics, and only scraped £95,000 at the global box office, those who have seen the Judi Dench film have been intrigued by its story.

The film tells the story of Joan Stanley (Dench), a retiree living a contented life in a picturesque English village.

One day, the tranquillity of her life is abruptly interrupted, and she’s arrested by MI5 for her secretive past as one of the most influential spies in living history.

As her incredible past catches up with her, the film flashes back to tell the story of the young Joan (Sophie Cookson), starting at Cambridge University in the 1930s when Joan – a physics student – falls for Russian saboteur, Leo.

Through him, she begins to see that the world is on the precipice, and must be saved from itself in the race to military supremacy.

Joan ends up working at a top secret nuclear research facility, where she encounters an ethical dilemma: will she betray her country and loved ones, if it means saving them?

Based on a true story

Judi Dench: ‘I used to think I’d never be employed again. I’ve always had that fear’

The film is based on the novel of the same name by Jennie Rooney, itself inspired by the true story of Melita Norwood, born in Bournemouth in 1912 and exposed to socialist ideals from a young age.

Both of her parents were active in local socialist circles, and her father produced The Southern Worker and Labour and Socialist Journal paper, which printed articles by Lenin and Trotsky and was distributed to local Communist Party members.

Norwood studied Latin and Logic at the University of Southampton, but dropped out after a year, moved to London, and joined the Independent Labour Party.

When that group fragmented, Norwood signed up to the Communist Party, and was recommended to the NKVD by leading Party member and journalist Andrew Rothstein in 1935.

The NKVD eventually had to cut back on its overseas espionage activities, so Norwood’s employers became the GRU, the Military Overseas Intelligence Service of the Soviet Union.

Norwood was a perfect candidate for a career in espionage, having worked as a secretary for the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association.

The association brought together public and privately funded research into the physical and chemical behaviour of metallic elements.

Working as a secretary to the project director meant that sensitive files would often pass across her desk – files containing the secrets of the British atomic weapons project that she was able to hand over to the Soviets.

It was Norwood’s handing over of these secrets that allowed the Soviets to copy  the British atom bomb within a year, and to catch up with its underlying technology within two.

“I do not agree with spying against one’s country”

Norwood was able to keep up the ruse for nearly 30 years, before she was identified as a risk to national security in 1965.

Even though they’d become aware of her treasonous activities, the British security services refrained from questioning her in order to avoid disclosing their methods, and to protect other investigations.

She retired in 1972, and remained in her Bexleyheath home until her death in 2005.

Her espionage activities weren’t publicly revealed until 1999, when former archivist Vasili Mitrokhin – who defected from the KGB in 1992 and gifted Britain a large stockpile of sensitive materials – outed her.

“In general I do not agree with spying against one’s country,” Norwood told the BBC in 1999, adding that she wanted to help Russia’s “new system”.

“I did what I did not to make money but to help prevent the defeat of a new system, which had at great cost given ordinary people food and fares which they could afford, good education and a health service,” she said.

Norwood said she thought some of the information she had access to “might be useful in helping Russia keep abreast of Britain, America and Germany”.

Despite her heavy involvement in espionage, she was never prosecuted for her actions.

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Red Joan (United Kingdom, 2019)

One evident problem relates to the manner in which the narrative has been structured. The movie tells the story of Joan Stanley (Judi Dench), an 80-ish woman who is unexpectedly arrested on her doorstep for violating the Official Secrets Act. For the next 95 minutes, Red Joan flashes back and forth between 2000 and the 1940s, when Joan (Sophie Cookson) is a graduate student at Cambridge. Although there’s nothing unique in having chronologically discrete sequences bookend the main story, Red Joan looks in on Old Joan every 10-to-15 minutes for no apparent reason other than to remind viewers that Judi Dench is the movie’s star. The frequent ping-ponging of timeframes interferes with the movie’s ability to catch and hold the viewer during either the World War II segments or the turn-of-the-century ones.

Joan’s secret remains buried for fifty years. However, when a key member of the Cambridge inner circle dies, newly-discovered documents reveal Joan’s participation in the ring. She must then not only answer the questions of investigators but justify herself to her skeptical son, Nick (Ben Miles), who is forced to struggle with new revelations about the mother he never really knew.

There are other minor quibbles. Although Dench and Sophie Cookson give strong performances, they often don’t seem to be playing the same character. The most forceful linkage between the two is provided by director Trevor Nunn, who composes fade shots to enforce the connection. There are also questions about the logic of Joan’s motivations and a shocking naivete on the part of both her and her professor/lover, Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore).

Period detail is one of Red Joan ’s strengths and, with the possible exception of Tom Hughes, whose Leo is more smarmy than seductive, the acting is consistently good. The movie is based on a novel written by Jennie Rooney, which in turn was inspired by the real-life case of Melita Norwood. Although the story (and its factual antecedent) is interesting, the presentation isn’t. Individual scenes work but the movie as a whole doesn’t. One can understand why, despite the involvement of an Oscar-winning actress, Red Joan isn’t getting much attention.

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Red Joan Review: Judi Dench Is Wasted in Dull Spy Drama

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Rebel Ridge Review: This Is How You F*cking Do It

The room next door review: waiting for death has never been this good [tiff 2024], speak no evil review: mcavoy show-stops but speak about the danish original instead.

Red Joan turns an incredible espionage story into a lethargic and boring film. Melita Norwood was a British woman who spied for the Soviet Union during and after World War II. The information she smuggled was directly responsible for the Soviets acquiring the atomic bomb. Red Joan , adapted from the novel by Jennie Rooney, is a fictional account based on Norwood's activities. What should be a riveting thriller is told with a plodding delivery.

Dame Judi Dench stars as the older Joan in modern times. A white-haired, genteel grandmother, she is arrested by the British government for espionage and treason. Her son (Ben Miles) is outraged by the charges. This must be a mistake. His mother spent her life as a librarian. It's only when he sits through her interrogation is the shocking truth revealed.

Sophie Cookson co-stars as the younger Joan. In the mid thirties, she was a reserved student studying physics at Cambridge. The only woman in her class, she meets the vibrant, sexually uninhibited Russian, Sonya (Tereza Srbova). Joan is taken by Sonya to a meeting of communists. She is captivated by the magnetic presence of Sonya's cousin Leo (Tom Hughes), a diehard Marxist and Stalinist. When the second world war breaks out, Joan is sent to work as an assistant to a critical government scientist (Stephen Campbell Moore). Her access to the British atomic weapons program made her an invaluable asset as a Soviet spy.

Red Joan is ninety percent flashback. Sophie Cookson has nearly all of the screen time as young Joan. Judi Dench isn't given anything to do, but look down or away wistfully as the character remembers her youthful transgressions. She's essentially wasted in the film. This isn't a knock on Cookson's performance. She does well with the tepid material given. There's just a huge imbalance to the plot. Famed theater director Trevor Nunn, who's won numerous awards on the West End and Broadway, needed to spread the wealth between the actresses. It's odd to have Judi Dench and underuse her. The granny next door being outed as a Russian agent is a helluva surprise. Red Joan doesn't spend nearly enough time on the fallout or reasons for her capture.

Joan's romantic relationships are the primary arcs, not the actual spying. This is understandable to a point. Her infatuation with Leo was the gateway to treachery. Trevor Nunn and screenwriter Lindsay Shapero get too embroiled in melodrama. The best scenes in the film are Joan trying to cover her tracks and investigating the depths of the spy ring. These moments have decent tension, but are fleeting. Then we have her pining over lovers entanglements. There was meat on the bone for a crisp, multi-layered storyline. Her betrayal was instrumental in evening the atomic scoreboard. Red Joan mildly explores her political motivations. What we get is a drab soap opera with a sprinkle of espionage.

An opportunity was missed for a far more engaging film. Red Joan has an able cast, but the film doesn't do their performances justice. It's a bummer seeing Judi Dench, who was so forceful as M in the Bond films, regulated as a meek secondary character. Red Joan is distributed in the US by IFC Films .

• Movie and TV Reviews
• Red Joan (2018)

Movie review: Red Joan

Scene from Red Joan

Dame Judi Dench again provides an acting masterclass in this British period romp about a British physicist who leads a double life, spying for the KGB.

The story begins in London in 2000 when Joan Stanley, a retired librarian in her 80s, is arrested by M15 for treason. The death of a previous colleague has revealed her to be one of the longest-serving double agents in Britain - a suggestion that stuns everyone, from Joan's neighbours to her lawyer son.

It's an interesting starting place for a story; spies aren't always James Bond-esque, they can also be your lovely, sweet, perfectly ordinary neighbour.

Joan's story is told in flashbacks, as she's questioned by government officials. First, as a student at Cambridge, and then as a young physicist employed as a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association in London during World War II.

It's here that Joan, played in her younger years by Sophie Cookson, is exposed to top-secret atomic-bomb information that she's accused of leaking to the USSR.

Dench gives a beautifully nuanced performance. At first she plays to perfection the part of a confused and innocent octogenarian then, as the story unfolds, she slowly reveals a woman who felt a moral obligation to leak secrets to the Soviets, believing both superpowers having the technology would prevent them from annihilating each other.

Cookson gets the less meaty role. It's hard to know whether this intelligent young woman was a communist sympathiser or just fell for charismatic socialist and spy Leo (Tom Hughes), with Joan's university years and time working in London reduced to a melodramatic romance.

The result is a story that could have been thrilling but is instead a nice, repetitive and slightly dull period costume drama. Thank goodness for Dame Judi Dench.

Cast: Judi Dench, Sophie Cookson Director: Trevor Nunn Running Time: 110 mins Rating: M (Sex Scenes) Verdict: A handsomely shot but dull spy thriller.

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