DEFENSE OF THE REALM

By Roger Ebert

"Defense of the Realm" is a newspaper thriller about a touchy investigation into British security matters. The story ends the way many newspaper stories end - inconclusively - but the movie ends with a shocking event that suggests the British and their U.S. allies would do anything to defend the American nuclear presence in the U.K.

The movie stars Gabriel Byrne as a young, ambitious newspaper reporter who covers a scandal involving a member of Parliament who has the bad judgment to patronize the same call girl used by a KGB agent. Is he a security risk, or does he only seem to be one? Byrne's paper doesn't ask too many questions before putting the story on Page 1 and forcing the politician's resignation. But there's an older, more experienced hand at the newspaper - a veteran political reporter played by Denholm Elliott, that most dependable and believable of British character actors. He believes the M.P. may have been framed by people who wanted to silence his embarrassing questions in Parliament. Byrne half-listens to him, and halfway wants to go with the story just because it's so spicy. Upstairs on the executive floor, the proprietor of the paper likes the scandal because it increases circulation.

The film moves quickly and confidently into a net of intrigue, and the director, David Drury, does a good job of keeping us oriented even though the facts in the case remain deliberately confusing. In one especially effective scene, he shows Byrne pretending to be a policeman in order to get quotes from the wife of the disgraced M.P.; her simple, quiet dignity when she discovers the deception is a rebuke to him.

So is the dogged professionalism of the veteran reporter, who has an anonymous source who insists the M.P. is innocent. But then the old-timer dies suspiciously, and it's up to Byrne to decide whether there's a deeper story involved or if it's only a coincidence.

"Defense of the Realm" reminded me sometimes of "All the President's Men," but this is a bleaker, more pessimistic movie, which assumes that a conspiracy can be covered up, and that the truth will not necessarily ever be found. The real target of the movie is the American nuclear presence in Britain, and the exciting framework of the newspaper story is an effective way to make a movie against nuclear arms without ever really addressing the point directly.

The acting is strong throughout, but Elliott is especially effective. What is it about this actor, who has been in so many different kinds of movies and seems to make each role special? You may remember him as the Thoreau quoting father in "A Room With a View," or as Ben Gazzara's lonely friend in "Saint Jack." Here he is needed to suggest integrity and scruples, and does it almost simply by the way he looks.

Gabriel Byrne, a relative newcomer, is quietly effective as the reporter, and Greta Scacchi, as a woman who gets involved on both sides of the case, shows again that she can project the quality of knowing more than she reveals. "Defense of the Realm" ends on a bleak and cynical note - unless you count the somewhat contrived epilogue - and gets there with intelligence and a sharp, bitter edge.

Defense of the Realm

By Paul Attanasio
Washington Post Staff Writer
February 13, 1987

In "Defense of the Realm," an efficient but impersonal British thriller, Nick Mullen (Gabriel Byrne), an efficient but impersonal tabloid reporter, notes a whiff of scandal about Dennis Markham, a left-wing member of Parliament (Ian Bannen). When it turns out that Markham, who is privy to state secrets, shared a prostitute with an East German spy, he is forced to resign. A boozy colleague, Vernon Bayliss (Denholm Elliott), himself a Red from the days when Reds were Reds, tells the dogged Mullen that he doesn't know the whole story. When Bayliss mysteriously dies, Mullen smells a rat. Assisted by Markham's gorgeous secretary (Greta Scacchi), Mullen digs away, uncovering an intrigue involving double agents, American missiles in Europe, the "national security" debate, disinformation and the death of a borstal boy. Better than most, "Defense of the Realm" captures the flavor of a news room, although part of the realism is how boring it is. Still, it's nice to see a movie where a reporter actually goes to the library once in a while and puts seemingly unrelated puzzle pieces together. For the most part, director David Drury keeps things at a ripping pace. Another in producer David Puttnam's series of art school grad/commercial directors turned filmmakers, Drury knows how to compose a frame, and "Defense of the Realm" fills the eye with glossy visuals. But its slickness is also a little insular and off-putting -- it makes the movie a distant object -- and it doesn't help that Byrne is one of those swarthy, impenetrable British leading men who always have their neckties undone. Byrne rarely registers an emotion, so the plot just seems like an elaborate machine, and one that gets increasingly creaky. While you can accept "Defense of the Realm's" fantastic coincidences, it's rather harder to accept all the nefarious misdeeds the movie ascribes to the government, even if a series of horrendous coincidences have put them on the, uh, defensive.