Closed Circuit
This is an extremely British version of Three Days of the Condor, but very much less uplifting. Not absolutely nihilist too, just mostly, in all ways that matter.
Secret courts judge an alleged terrorist on secret evidence, while the lawyers for both sides cut through the red tape to find what happened. People get miffed while keeping their upper lips squarely stiff.
The romantic plot is so British. Where a gentle caress of the face is the moral equivalent of bending her over and make her come right there on the courtroom locker room. It’s so subdued, the UST is off the charts.
There are also polite hitmen who soliloquise, backstabbing mentors, foot chases through London back alleys. Hitmen using piano wires, Hitman-style.
The cast is greatly enhanced by a Julie Stiles cameo as the murdered New York Times reporter. She’s got the Bourne bonafides.
Riz Ahmed can’t catch a break. He is either the terrorist or the Spy covering up for terrorists on the MI5 payroll.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.