As with many spy movies, Page Eight does serious things with a light touch.
Near the beginning of the film, when the characters are just starting to show themselves to us, the chief spook, MI5 head Benedict Baron (Michael Gambon), and Johnny are in a crowded MI5 lift.
Looking straight ahead, Benedict asks Johnny, “What are you thinking? What have you been thinking?”.
Johnny is silent until they get out of the lift, when he says, “What the hell do you mean? Why are you asking me in the lift, in front of all these people? Is this some kind of game? Are you mad?”
Old friends, their banter goes back to their university days, their differences highlighted by their taste in music.
Craggy old Benedict, known as Ben, likes classical music and relatively lithe Johnny likes jazz, but when it comes to relationships, Ben is a stayer and Johnny is a sprinter, having discarded one of his many wives and passed her over to Ben, complete with a baby daughter Julianne, now all grown-up (Felicity Jones).
Sensitive information has come to light, so far buried under bureaucratic secrecy by ghastly home secretary Andrea Catcheside (Saskia Reeves), and is being used by Johnny’s malicious superior, Jill Tankard (Judy Davis), out to ingratiate herself with an untrustworthy PM (Ralph Fiennes).
There’s a stellar cast and a lot of intrigue, both at work and at home.
Across the landing in Johnny’s mansion block is Nancy Pierpan (Rachel Weisz), a Syrian refugee, outraged by the Israeli army having killed her brother, a good subplot.
Things threaten to go belly-up for both story and film when Ben dies a sudden death, but director and screenwriter David Hare’s clever scripting carries the day, the focus shifting seamlessly to Johnny’s likely promotion.
It’s Bill Nighy’s film. He’s in almost every scene, doing what he does best: slightly ineptly getting there in the end.
His spying isn’t up to James Bond’s standards by any means; his relationships with women are mostly uneasy to the point of awkwardness.
His unease with his ex-wife and daughter is understandable - he’s been a hopeless husband and father - but putting his trust in his neighbour Nancy is not as understandable, nor is her attraction to him completely convincing.
There’s something about Johnny, and many of Bill Nighy’s other characters too, that needs audiences to engage with him in a helpful way, as if he can’t quite manage without us.
You’ll urge him on, be delighted when he succeeds and feel for him when he doesn’t.
It’s really good film-making.
★★★
