A Call To Spy

 This review may contain spoilers!

 

A Call To Spy is a fictional account of the World War II-era spy organisation SOE and the period in time during which they recruited and trained female spies. The film takes an intimate look at the inner workings of how London managed these operations, and how said operations were carried out in the field by famous operatives, Virginia Hall and Noor Inayat Khan. This film had a strong ability to build and maintain a tense scene, particularly during the first and second act. This did a good job of immersing you in the perilous livelihood of the spy operatives during this time. A Call To Spy is also remarkable in that it draws some clever parallels to modern day society, observations that are certainly a tough pill to swallow. The film takes the stance of an allied country fighting the Nazis but even within Britain you see a lot of prejudice against Jewish people, whom this war has affected so severely. Further to this later in the film, we see how the Nazi power influence the types of media and literature people watch and see, even cycling false information to further their agenda. So this examination of history and how it links to some troubling aspects of our own society drum a few of the themes home quite potently.

 

Stana Katic, who played Vera Atkins,  is the true intensive spymaster of the film; Katic has a shrewd way of navigating scenes in a fashion that always marks her as the most capable and intelligent. Radhika Apte, who played Noor Inayat Khan, is the conscience of the fight in this feature; Apte plays this kind-hearted and determined woman with overflowing amounts of passion. Linus Roache, who played Maurice Buckmaster, has a wonderful chemistry with Katic as the pair play joint spymasters in operation together; Roache does a good job of depicting a character torn between his political duty and the morally right thing to do.

 

However, the best performance came from Sarah Megan Thomas, who played Virginia Hall. This is a role who seems fuelled by an ambitious need to help or be involved in the war effort, right from her introduction you get the sense that she is driven by a need to go further than administration work. Thomas does a great job at portraying the outrage and frustration her role often encounters in response to the judgements made in relation to her disability, even giving a harrowing recount on how she lost her leg at one stage. Once we see Virginia Hall begin her spy training it is like watching her come alive, she has this relentless drive to succeed and an inability to break under pressure. Watching Thomas coolly navigate tense scenes and become a well respected leader amongst the spy movie is the driving force behind this film and one of the main reasons to watch.

One of the most common historical features I tend to see are examinations of the World War II-era, and a consequence of this is struggling to find films that actually manage to stand out in a sea of very alike media. A Call To Spy may very well have some clever insights and tense scenes but it lacks the ability to do anything noteworthy, to truly set itself apart from the crowd. The entire feature examines this spy operation but you never really feel like there's a big successful moment that transpires, in fact a lot of tense scenes build to an anti-climax. This is an honest film that reveals facts about the history of said military operations but it never adds anything that makes you excited to be watching the film. The main trajectory of the movie makes me feel like the protagonists fail more than they ever succeed, and the minor personal dramas along the way never impact the main story in a way that matters. Even the capture and execution of Noor, one of the main roles in the film, isn't given as much impact as the moment deserves; in fact the circumstances of her death are almost delicately tip-toed around. The cinematography throughout the feature is quite blocky and any time the camerawork goes free-hand it doesn't look good. The editing for the film turns a slow-paced drama into a very sluggish story to watch, with a very simple approach to how scenes are pieced together. The score for the film is unremarkable and never manages to lift the mood of a scene, leaving all the work of establishing the tone to the script and performers.

Rossif Sutherland, who played Dr. Chevain, is quite a soft presence in amongst this tense war environment; you never felt the desperation or fear of living under Nazi occupation from Sutherland. Samuel Roukin, who played Christopher, is a rather simple role who is designed to be abrasive for the sake of it; any scene he enters he is there to engineer conflict without ever actually fleshing out a character. Andrew Richardson, who played Alfonse, is there for Thomas to bounce off but struggles to leave his own mark playing a freedom fighter; this is a very muted character who is seated right in front of the action but lacks serious screen presence. Marc Rissman and Joe Doyle, who played Klaus Barbie and Father Robert Alesche respectively, weren't very strong antagonists for the film; Rissman was a very generic bellowing Nazi officer while the wilting turncoat we got from Doyle wasn't particularly inspired either.

While this film has some nice points to make it is most decisively a very bland historic drama. I would give A Call To Spy a 4.5/10.