Director: Lydia Dean Pilcher
Rating: Four stars, Streaming on Amazon Prime
A Call to Spy is a rare World War II film that doesn’t seek to strike awe and fear the requisites now to win battles. Quite in character with its heroes, a group of largely unheralded women spies (“the headless”, as they were called) who helped Resistance efforts in a France occupied by Hitler’s Army, it is un-showy and un-bombastic, populated by little people meeting their little deaths, not with big, big bangs but with big, big hearts.
For us, in the subcontinent, of course, A Call to Spy is vital as one of the people it shines light on is Noor Inayat Khan, born to an India-born Sufi mystic and a British mother, who was picked for her wireless abilities, placed in one of the toughest posts during the war, and was commended for bravely holding onto it till the end.
TERRY GROSS, HOST: This is FRESH AIR. I m Terry Gross.
John le Carre, the author whose spy novels were praised for transcending genre fiction and simply being great literature, died Saturday of pneumonia. He was 89. Many of his books have been adapted into films or TV series, including The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, The Little Drummer Girl, The Constant Gardener and The Night Manager.
In his New York Times obituary, Sarah Lyall wrote that le Carre, quote, portrayed British intelligence operations as cesspools of ambiguity in which right and wrong are too close to call and in which it is rarely obvious whether the ends, even if the ends are clear, justify the means. Le Carre s spies are lonely, disillusioned men whose work is driven by budget troubles, bureaucratic power plays and the opaque machinations of politicians, men who are as likely to be betrayed by colleagues and lovers as by the enemy, unquote.
A Call to Spy movie review: Radhika Apte-starrer is un-showy and un-bombastic
Director Lydia Dean Pilcher uses Radhika Apte well in the role of Noor Inayat Khan, not overplaying or undermining her Eastern ancestry, placing the talented actor shoulder-to-shoulder among her contemporaries.
Rating: 4 out of 5 Updated: December 12, 2020 8:48:05 am
A Call to Spy is streaming on Amazon Prime Video. (Photo: White Turtle Studios)
A Call to Spy cast: Sarah Megan Thomas, Radhika Apte, Stana Katic, Linus Roache, Rossif Sutherland
A Call to Spy director: Lydia Dean Pilcher
A Call to Spy rating: Four stars
A Call to Spy is a rare World War II film that doesn’t seek to strike awe and fear the requisites now to win battles. Quite in character with its heroes, a group of largely unheralded women spies (“the headless”, as they were called) who helped Resistance efforts in a France occupied by Hitler’s Army, it is un-showy and un-bombastic, populated by lit