Review of Page Eight (2011) by Peter A — 19 Jan 2012

What was the purpose of this film? As entertainment it fails miserably - wooden characters and upper lips so stiff it's a surprise we can still see Bill Nighy's smokers lines. It's like a government committee has taken "Yes Minister" and boiled it in salt and vinegar for several years to remove any sense of humour or humanity.

Poor old Judy Davis must be truly sick of roles like this: bitter/sour evil post menopausal grumpy old women. As a thriller - well I might have been in suspense if in fact I could work out what the f.

.. was supposed to be happening from one scene to the next . What I managed to deduce was that a British PM happens upon some information that the Americans have hidden - some British citizens have been interrogated (or something) at nearby secret locations.

The PM chose not to share this (as revealed on Page Eight of a report) with the Home Secretary nor the Deputy-General of MI5 (Michael Gambon) who is close to death/retirement and somehow (not explained) gets this information separately from an informant (not revealed).

As a swan-song, the DG shares this intel with 2 2IC characters who might replace him: Bill Nighy (Johnny Worricker) and Judy Davis who pursue separate devious and underhand paths to destroy each others' careers.

The DG dies and Johnny somehow decides to use the information to try to blackmail the PM (a Ralph Fiennes cameo) into revealing that Israelis apparently murdered an innocent Syrian (the brother of Rachel Weisz's character - Nancy Pierpan) - who is Johnny's across the hall neighbour) while erecting a wall running through the brother's house in the West Bank (?).

The Hone Secretary is promoted to Deputy PM (even though there was no vacancy). Along the way Johnny manages to offend his artist (pregnant) daughter and discovers that he, his daughter and Nancy have been stalked by a private investigator, presumably hired by Judy Davis and/or the PM.

So Johnny has a lingering smooch with Nancy (I was looking for something to spew into at this point) and heads off to Rio (?) with a plastic shopping bag with 60,000 GBP he got from selling one of his numerous artworks (rather questionable for a multi-divorced public servant - even a senior one).

As to how he was supposed to smuggle that amount of cash through HM Customs is left unanswered together with the myriad of other questions the viewer is left with. I got the impression that the producers ran out of money and rushed a sloppy unfulfilling ending.