A massive explosion rocks a covered market, but Central London still looks mighty handsome in the British thriller Closed Circuit. So does the actress Rebecca Hall. Decked out in blacks, creams and grays, she and her city both are sleek, elegant and more than a little forbidding, even if they’re softened by pockets of olde worlde soul.
Hall plays Claudia, a lawyer assigned to monitor the government’s closed-court use of classified evidence against the bombing’s one surviving suspect, Faroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto). Erdogan is a Turk with an apparent drug habit, and when his lawyer dies without warning, Claudia finds herself partnered with his replacement, Martin, played by Eric Bana with consistently clenched jaw and inconsistent slippage into Aussie diction.
Needless to say, the two were lovers once, a fact they agree to gloss over in preliminary talks with the judge (Cameron Fischer) and the Attorney General, a fishy customer played with chilling bonhomie by Jim Broadbent. The lie will pop up later to change the game.
In a twist apparently based on real-life developments in criminal law, Claudia’s exposure to classified evidence forbids any communication with her colleague. So much for that: When Claudia and Martin find out that Erdogan is not who he seems to be, the pair join forces to uncover what may be an unsavory alliance between Britain’s secret service and its criminal justice system.
There’s been a cover-up, you see, and as the two try to protect a compromised informant, dodge unidentified thugs and count the bodies of other potential whistle-blowers who know more than is good for them — The New York Times fares poorly — chemistry seeps back between Martin and Claudia.