My wife and I watched this at home on DVD from our public library.
The novel and this movie called "Red Joan" are very loosely based, or inspired by, the real story of Melita Norwood who was raised in England as a Russian sympathizer by her dad. The years have been changed, the names changed, and the main character has become a Theoretical Physicist instead of a secretary. So if one judges the movie strictly on historical accuracy, it gets very poor marks.
However as a fictional war-era espionage drama it works very well. The main character features Judi Dench as elderly Joan who was arrested and questioned in her late 80s, not many years before she died. But most of the interesting stuff occurs in the 1930s and 1940s as several countries worked independently to manufacture an atomic bomb.
The real featured role belongs to 20-something Sophie Cookson in the role of the young Joan and she performs quite admirably. Most of the movie is told in flashback.
We enjoyed the movie and in spite of its mostly fictional story it illustrates the political and wartime climate of those times.
The novel and this movie called "Red Joan" are very loosely based, or inspired by, the real story of Melita Norwood who was raised in England as a Russian sympathizer by her dad. The years have been changed, the names changed, and the main character has become a Theoretical Physicist instead of a secretary. So if one judges the movie strictly on historical accuracy, it gets very poor marks.
However as a fictional war-era espionage drama it works very well. The main character features Judi Dench as elderly Joan who was arrested and questioned in her late 80s, not many years before she died. But most of the interesting stuff occurs in the 1930s and 1940s as several countries worked independently to manufacture an atomic bomb.
The real featured role belongs to 20-something Sophie Cookson in the role of the young Joan and she performs quite admirably. Most of the movie is told in flashback.
We enjoyed the movie and in spite of its mostly fictional story it illustrates the political and wartime climate of those times.