Glorious 39 Romola Garai, Bill Nighy, Julie Christie Director: Stephen Poliakoff
A period thriller set in England in 1939 - hence the film's title - Stephen Poliakoff's first feature in a decade revolves around the travails of budding actress Anne Keyes (Romola Garai), who stumbles across recordings which document the efforts of a group of British politicians (her MP father, played by Bill Nighy, among them) to steer the country towards appeasement rather than hostility with Nazi Germany.
Unfurling as a flashback, as a family descendant attempts to track the story of her ancestors, the reminiscences feature cunning aristocrats and dodgy deaths amid a splendid production design, which certainly uses the template set out by recent wartime epics such as Atonement.
It's an entertaining romp, and the cast give their all to a story which admittedly operates on contrivances. Garai, of course, delivers a forceful turn as the ingenue caught out of her depth when confronted with a political conspiracy with deadly consequences; the veterans - Nighy, Julie Christie and Jeremy Northam among them - are as convincing as one could get as stiff-upper-lipped individuals stopping at nothing for what they believe is a greater good for themselves and their country.
That could also be said of Glorious 39 as a historical treatise, with Poliakoff opting for convenient but implausible truths to make the film flow, as he strips the political complexities of the day and reduces them to a web of shady, killer plots.
Extras: feature-length commentary with Poliakoff and Garai; making-of featurettes; footage of London premiere.