| War Book | |
|---|---|
 UK film poster | |
| Directed by | Tom Harper |
| Written by | Jack Thorne |
| Produced by | Lauren Dark Tom Harper |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Zac Nicholson |
| Edited by | Mark Eckersley |
| Music by | Jack C. Arnold |
Production companies | Sixteen Films Archer's Mark |
| Distributed by | K5 International |
Release dates |
|
Running time | 92 minutes[1] |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
War Book is a 2014 Britishpoliticaldrama film directed byTom Harper and written byJack Thorne. The film features anensemble cast, consisting ofAdeel Akhtar,Nicholas Burns,Ben Chaplin,Shaun Evans,Kerry Fox,Phoebe Fox,Sophie Okonedo,Antony Sher (In his final film role before his death in 2021), andNathan Stewart-Jarrett.
Over the course of three days, eight government officials, a Member of Parliament, and a political appointee participate in awar-game which has taken place regularly among Britishcivil servants since the 1960s, as a way to help them formulate government procedure in the event ofnuclear war.[2] In the depicted meetings, set in 2014, the group discusses possible UK policy in the fictional event of a nuclear detonation inMumbai, India by a Pakistani organisation.[3]
The film was first shown on 13 October 2014, during theLondon Film Festival. It featured as the opening film of theInternational Film Festival Rotterdam on 21 January 2015 and saw a limited cinema release on 7 August 2015, and premiered onBBC Four only four days later, on 11 August 2015.[4][5]
Onreview aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 75% based on 8 reviews, with an average rating of 7.67/10.[6]Variety's Charles Gant found the film's dialogue somewhat theatrical and compared it toRoger Donaldson’sThirteen Days, which proved that "a talkathon rooted in a historical moment of genuine peril can be far more gripping than any invented drama, and many audiences may find the final act of "War Book" to be risibly paranoid by comparison."[3]The Guardian's Mike McCahill felt that "theatricality looms, but the variation of voices and viewpoints among the expert cast generates a rat-a-tat momentum."[7]The List's Nikki Baughan was much more enthusiastic, comparing it toSidney Lumet's 1957 classicTwelve Angry Men, stating that "Jack Thorne's remarkable script is a masterclass in slow-burn tension, combining black-and-white facts with the murky greys of human emotion to drive home the fragility of social order in the face of incoming warheads."[8]