Tom Wilkinson

Denial

Director: Mick Jackson (2016) BBFC cert: 12A

Book yourself a grandstand seat at the Old Bailey for this courtroom drama of international importance. Smartly crafted from a real case, it provides plenty of evidence that great writing, performance and direction make for gripping cinema.

Brit actress Rachel Weisz sports red hair and a US accent as forthright Jewish university lecturer, Deborah Lipstadt. It’s an impassioned performance fuelled by an unbending sense of moral certainty, full of  sharp intelligence, wit and determination.

There’s a very American feel to proceedings, with an emphasis on the sanctity of free speech and the virtues of jogging. Lawyers of course, are celebrated.

Deborah is forced to to come to London to defend herself when she is sued for libel by British historian and holocaust denier, David Irving.

Timothy Spall is magnificent as the self-taught and social climbing bigot on the make. Endowing him with charm, dignity and sincerity, Spall makes Irving’s reprehensible  arguments appear dangerously and falsely reasonable and seductive.

The case hinges on Irving’s denial of  the true purpose of Auschwitz. He claims the death camp in Nazi occupied Poland during the Second World War wasn’t geared for industrial genocide. The cost of Deborah losing will be Holocaust denial being legitimised by a court of law, potentially allowing for a legally backed downgrading of Nazi atrocities.

Various Characters are denied their voice in court, not least the vociferous Deborah who is frustrated at having to allow her barrister, Richard, to speak on her behalf. Tom Wilkinson is wry, irrascible and fond of red wine as her much experienced advocate.

There’s a strong supporting cast throughout, even if the presence of Andrew Scott and Mark Gatiss from TV’s Sherlock occasionally lend the air of superior Sunday evening TV fare.

However a winter visit to Auschwitz offers some welcome visual gravitas and underlines the utter importance of the case. And when the verdict comes in, there’s no denying the audience is the winner.

★★★★☆

Snowden

Director: Oliver Stone (2016) BBFC cert: 15

Oliver Stone’s ham-fisted biopic of a CIA whistleblower is a sprawling and disjointed essay on espionage. The veteran director explores the conflict between individual liberty and state control by dramatising the life of Edward Snowden, portrayed as a patriot who becomes a dissident martyr to the cause of freedom.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has never been more anodyne than as the CIA employee who became global news when he revealed thousands of classified security documents to the world.

The computer programmer is shocked when he discovers the US spy agency regularly ignores the law and spies on anyone they choose to. It’s difficult to muster sympathy for him. What did he imagine the CIA does all day?

Even so, he’s not totally outraged until his politically liberal girlfriend becomes a target for surveillance by his employer. Shailene Woodley is wasted as Lindsay, and seems chosen as much for her ability to pole dance as for her acting talent. She’s represented as a radicalising influence on Snowden, unfairly shifting the blame for his act of treason from him to her.

Tom Wilkinson, Rhys Ifans and Nicolas Cage offer flamboyant energy, trying to out do each other and making up for the lead’s lacklustre presence. Meanwhile the script is thinly stretched over 10 years and a lot of ground, taking in Japan, Hawaii, Hong Kong, Switzerland and Russia.

Although visually restrained by his own standards, Stone enthusiastically employs a confusion of camera angles, colour filters and a fractured narrative. None of these tricks succeed in making a series of hotel room conversations interesting. There is a lot of staring at computer screens.

Stone is full of righteous angry at the treatment Snowden receives, but he fails to justify the actions of a very flaky individual.

★★☆☆☆

@ChrisHunneysett

Good People

Director: Henrik Ruben Genz (2015)

Temptation brings danger to a struggling young couple in this silly and dingy thriller.

Americans Tom and Anna are the good people making a fresh start in London after suffering a domestic tragedy. They’re neither especially bright nor particularly likeable.

Though we’re told they’ve been together for a long time, there’s an unfortunate lack of chemistry between James Franco and Kate Hudson in the lead roles.

Having inherited Tom’s grandmother’s large house, they’ve accumulated large debts trying to renovate it.

When they discover £220,000 of much needed cash in the flat of dead neighbour, they can’t resist helping themselves.

Danish director Gnez has his cinematographer Jorgen Johansson dress the city in the gloom typical of Scandinavian noir, adding an extra layer of dreariness to proceedings.

The moral question of taking the money is quickly glossed over as the plot descends into bloody, predictable, tension-free violence. It occasionally strays unintentionally close to farce.

Tom Wilkinson plays a grieving cop chasing Sam Spruell’s villain who is trying to recover his stolen drugs money.

As Omar Sy wanders through as an urbane Frenchman trying to muscle in on the London heroin trade, the always engaging Anna Friel is wasted in a role requiring her to cradle a baby, squeal at a washing machine and perch precariously up a ladder.

As threats are issued, hands broken and furniture is destroyed, nail guns and snooker cues are put to use which probably affect their warranty.

★★☆☆☆