A whistleblower tries to stop the Iraq war

The filmmaking isn't flashy, but Official Secrets tells a compelling story.

In 2003, Katherine Gun did her best to stop Britain from entering the Iraq war. As a British intelligence employee with a specialty in translation, Gun violated the country's Secrets Act so that she could reveal a controversial email. The email instructed those working at Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to look for information that could be used to pressure U.N. Security Council members to vote for a resolution authorizing the war.

Although Gun's leaked email was published by The Observer, it obviously didn't stop British participation in a war that was being carefully engineered and for which the "intelligence'' books were being cooked.

Directed by Gavin Hood (Eye in the Sky) and starring Keira Knightley, Official Secrets tells Gun's story in straightforward fashion, taking us inside a whistleblower's anxiety-riddled world. Things don't go smoothly for Gun, who eventually was put on trial for violating the Official Secrets Act of 1989.

Knightley and Hood don't add much by way of over-dramatized flourish to the portrayal of Gun, a woman who lived with her Muslim husband (Adam Bakri) in London. After making her momentous decision, Gun tormented herself. Would she get caught? Had she done the right thing?

Written by Sara and Gregory Bernstein, Official Secrets boasts a strong supporting cast. Matt Smith appears as Observer reporter Martin Bright, the journalist who fights to publish the explosive email. Matthew Goode portrays one of Bright's colleagues and Rhys Ifans signs on as the Observer's wild-eyed U.S. correspondent, a reporter who works hard to confirm the authenticity of the email Gun leaked.

Conleth Hill portrays the editor who struggles about publishing a story that could derail a war effort his paper previously supported. Late in the movie, an understated (what else?) Ralph Fiennes shows up as Ben Emmerson, the barrister who defends Katharine.

Official Secrets doesn't always make for rousing cinema but it serves as an important reminder of what can happen to those who realize that secret government objectives sometimes should be subordinated to higher values, one of them being the truth.

The terrors of long-distance warfare

Eye in The Sky brings ethnical issues into agonizing focus.

The day after I saw Eye saw Eye in The Sky, bombs went off at Brussels' main airport and in the city's subway. Although Eye in The Sky deals with fictional events in Nairobi and involves al-Shabaab terrorists who seem far removed from Europe, the movie raises issues that resound with disturbing urgency in a post-Paris, post-Brussels world.

It's also worth remembering that Nairobi has known its share of terror, including a devastating attack at the upscale Westgate Mall in 2013.

Eye in the Sky brims with questions: If it were possible to know about an impending terrorist attack or at least to suspect that one was more than likely, how much collateral damage would be tolerable to prevent it? And what if one of the people in the path of a devastating drone attack happened to be a nine-year-old girl with no connection to anyone's political agenda?

Most movies that directly tackle ethical issues melt into puddles of prosaically stated positions. But Eye in the Sky -- deftly directed by Gavin Hood (Tsotsi and Rendition) and sharply written by Guy Hibbert -- brings its issues to the fore without sacrificing much by way of dramatic credibility and tension.

The story takes place in several locations, notably Great Britain, the US and Kenya.

Early on, we meet Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren), a British officer who operates out of London.

Once her mission shifts from capture to kill, Col. Powell becomes increasingly eager to get on with the job. She's a steely officer whose focus on the mission tends to obliterate all other concerns, so much so that she's willing to fudge here and there if it means taking out high-priority targets she's been pursuing for years.

Questions about the propriety of the attack are further complicated by the fact that one of the jihadists is an American citizen and two are British citizens. Under what circumstances can it be legally allowable for a country to kill its own citizens, even those participating in jihad?

Drone operations are conducted from Nevada, where a young officer (Aaron Paul) and a newly assigned co-pilot (Phoebe Fox) are charged with flying a drone over Nairobi. If there's an attack, Paul's Steve Watts will have to pull the trigger.

A conference room full of London officials must make the final decision about whether to fire a deadly Hellfire missile into a Nairobi neighborhood where the terrorists have gathered.

At this meeting, we meet a general played by the late Alan Rickman and a nervous group of civilian bureaucrats portrayed by Jeremy Northam, Richard McCabe and Monica Dolan.

Rickman's character upholds the military position. Among the others, no one wants to shoulder blame for a decision that could lead to a public relations disaster. Frequently, the characters insist on referring the matter "up," meaning they want someone of higher rank to take responsibility.

On the ground in Kenya, an operative (Barkhad Abdi) helps provide information. Abdi's character employs a battery operated camera embedded in a mechanical beetle to provide views from inside the house where the jihadists have gathered to prepare for a suicide bombing.

And that's yet another of the movie's concerns: The men and women who are conducting this mission see almost everything on screens. They're engaged in a brand of combat that operates at far remove from the scene of destruction.

But that doesn't mean that they aren't affected by what they're doing or that they're unaware of the many ironies that infiltrate their high-tech worlds.

I can't know Hood's every intention, but beneath all the bickering, politicking and worrying about who may get blamed for what, you'll find something else: The movie demonstrates that the people who make these terrible decisions don't take them lightly. They'll all have to live with the consequences of choices that seldom produce clear-cut results.

The movie's smart enough not to delude us: It reminds us that there are situations in which every option has an awful -- and perhaps even unbearable -- downside.

Taut and chastening, Eye in The Sky leaves you saddened and shaken.