Joan Stanley was exposed as being one of the KGB's longest serving British spies. Based very loosely on the real life spy Melita Norwood.
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Joan Stanley was British born and became a Soviet and communist part sympathiser and as she is employed by the British Government civil servant using this to then actually pass information onto the KGB in the mid 1930s. She is undetected as a spy for over half a century but a death will led MI5 to eventually track her down.
She transferred information about nuclear bomb secrets to the Soviet Union as she believed if everyone had the same information then nothing would break out in terms of war. The story we see unfold with a younger Joan was that she was totally in love with Leo Galich a German Jew who she met through her friend Sonya.
The main issue with the film as that even though it doesn't really seem to very much like the true story it is based on, it makes everything extremely dull. From start to finish you expect something impressive and are left wondering how a story about a woman never being caught as a spy until her old age, should be very exciting.
They opted for the rather disappointing love story being the issue and real reasons behind it. That wasn't massively engaging in all honesty and left me rather bored from start to finish. Such a shame really considering Judi Dench was old Joan with Sophie Cookson looking impressive as young Joan despite having hardly anything to really worth with.
Always a shame when you are looking forward to seeing a film and left feeling rather empty when it doesn't live up to your expectations. It really could have had such a great story at its core and for whatever reason chose the worst possible way to then tell it.
