Elderly English woman Joan Stanley (Judi Dench) is taken and interrogated by MI5. She is suspected of being a part of a Cambridge spy ring which passed on British nuclear secrets around the war. In flashbacks, she is a Cambridge student who is befriended by Sonya who introduces her to committed communist Leo during the Spanish Civil War. She falls for the charismatic Leo. She joins the British nuclear effort and falls for her married superior.

The structure of the movie and its title give away most of the story. On top of that, a beautiful girl falling for a is often infuriating. Leo is an annoying . He is pretty which makes the infatuation understandable. It does not make the relationship any less infuriating. As for Joan's final reason, it comes way too late which makes it seem more like an excuse. It's game theory at work and I also hate those . It's superiority mental game thinking and an arrogant one. The back and forth about her guilt is interesting but I never got the sense that the movie would push a shocking reveal. Overall, it has some interesting actors and an interesting story. It's just not one that I like.

Red Joan is a cosy bland film inspired by the true story of granny spy Melita Norwood. She was unmasked as a KGB agent late in her life.

Judi Dench plays the elderly Joan Stanley who is taken in for questioning by the police as a suspected Soviet spy.

Her son Nick (Ben Miles) is a barrister who helps her as she is questioned. Nick learns that his mother was a scientist who worked in the laboratory that developed the atom bomb.

The flashbacks scenes had young Joan (Sophie Cookson) as an idealist communist sympathiser. She is fascinated by Leo (Tom Hughes) and his cousin Sonya who are supporters of the Russian revolution.

Joan gets a job within the Tube Alloys project. The government project that secretly developed the atomic bomb.

After the bombing of Hiroshima. Joan finds herself passing secrets so the Soviets also have parity in the nuclear arms race.

Joan also falls in love with her boss, Professor Max Davis (Stephen Campbell Moore) who is later suspected of possible espionage.

This is a plodding, sludgy film with an interminable romance subplot. This is really a television film.

Just because it is based on true facts does not meant it will be an interesting movie. This does not hold a candle to films/tv shows about the Cambridge Spies; Philby, Burgess, Blunt, Maclean.

There are some good performances but it is a movie with no thrills.

I also did not buy the fact that Russia would not had been able to have developed the atomic bomb without Joan's help. After the war, Russian bought over their own share of Nazi scientists who had worked in developing the bomb.

The film is based on a novel inspired by the "Granny Spy." Joan Smith was a left-leaning student at college and attended pro-communist party meetings, but never joined. They became her friends. She was a scientist who worked in developing the atomic bomb. She passed on classified information about the bomb to Stalin, our beloved ally, as a deterrent for anyone to use such a weapon again.

Joan believed she was doing something good, a theme not too well presented. Her relationship with her son needed work too as it became significant in the closing scene. Unfortunately, Judi Dench's role was to mainly sit on a chair and not say anything. They could have used a cutout and saved a lot of money.

Guide: No F-word. Brief sex. brief nudity (Sophie Cookson)