Closed Circuit

Filmmaking doesn’t get much more timely than this: as politicians debate personal privacy, online spying and domestic terrorism, writer Steven Knight (‘Eastern Promises’) and director John Crowley (‘Boy A’) present ‘Closed Circuit’, which wraps up all those issues into a neat little John Le Carré-esque thriller package. Sadly, thanks to ropey performances, join-the-dots plotting and nail-shreddingly awful dialogue, all those good intentions amount to little. Eric Bana is pompous and unconvincingly posh as Martin Rose, the barrister called on to defend a Turkish immigrant accused of masterminding a bombing in Borough Market. Rebecca Hall is Special Advocate Claudia Simmons-Howe, representing the accused when the case goes to closed session at the request of MI5. If any of this is confusing, don’t worry: the movie spells it all out with numbing, repetitive obviousness. How Knight and Crowley managed to persuade such upstanding actors – not to mention Jim Broadbent, Anne-Marie Duff, Ciaran Hinds and Riz Ahmed – to take part in this fiasco is destined to remain a mystery. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Trite.