Worth: $14.00
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Cast:
Sarah Megan Thomas, Stana Katic, Radhika Apte, Linus Roache
Intro:
...a well-crafted wartime drama about a group of people many know very little about.
During the Second World War, after the fall of France to the Nazis, England set up the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Their MO was ‘ungentmanly warfare’, with a goal of sneaking into France, grabbing as much reliable intel as possible, and shaking up the regime through sabotage and subversion.
A Call to Spy follows the true story of the SOE’s ‘spymistress’ Vera Atkins (Stana Katic) and two of her recruits, Noor Inayat Khan (Radhika Apte) and Virginia Hall (Sarah Megan Thomas, who also wrote and produced the film). This being the time and place that it was, A Call to Spy is quick off the mark to address the misogynistic elephant in the room. Not only do Atkins’ superiors insist that her recruits are attractive (‘To you or the Nazis?’, she coolly responds), but she’s even seen fighting against the ludicrous suggestion that her team shouldn’t be trained the same way as the men. After all, one wouldn’t want to scare the little ladies, eh, what, what?
The hiring of Khan and Hall also comes under close scrutiny, with the former being a Muslim pacifist and the latter being a brash American who lost her leg in a hunting accident. Atkins, herself, is not free from persecution. Being a Jewish Romanian immigrant in London, her loyalty to the cause appears to be regularly questioned.
And that’s one of the more interesting aspects of A Call to Spy, as it strays from the populist narrative of stiff upper lipped Brits being the bally heroes we know them to be. In this film, the men fighting for Churchill are happy to look down their noses at the women coming in to support them, while also lamenting the possibility that England will be flooded by Jewish immigrants after the war. The narrative isn’t saying that Allied Forces were bad people, but they were definitely flawed.
Once Vera’s team lands in France, the film loses a bit of traction due to its pacing and uneven focus on its protagonists. As Hall goes undercover as an American spy, A Call to Spy seems to favour her narrative more than Khan, who is mostly seen moving from one location to another to communicate in code back to old Blighty. Perhaps the issue is trying to wrap a two-hour narrative around three very different and bold people; their history and fates seem more suited to individual tales. That said, once the third act kicks into gear, A Call to Spy becomes a lesson in tension as the team fall under the gaze of the Gestapo and the Butcher of Lyon, Klaus Barbie (Marc Rissman).
Overall, despite its wheels spinning in the second act, A Call to Spy is a well-crafted wartime drama about a group of people many know very little about.
