Review of Red Joan

Having researched the life of Melita Norwood - the real name of the fictional "Joan" played by Judi Dench in this film - it is obvious that this film has moved far from the truth of the deception that Joan carried out. Norwood came from a fervently communist/socialist household and NEVER went to Cambridge university. She studied Latin and logic at Southampton University for a year before dropping out. There was no love affair with a Russian sympathiser and she worked at British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association. She had already married a communist sympathiser before she was recruited by the NVKD because she was secretary to the research director at "Tube Alloys" a codename for atomic research facilities. She had ZERO understanding of the science and wouldn't have known one end of a pipette from another but she did have access to the research papers which she meticulously photographed and handed over to her Russian handler. History has deemed her deceptions as more damaging to British security than the infamous Cambridge Five. Thus the film plays fast and loose with the real history and rather cynically tries to entice the viewer into sympathising with "Red Joan" (who didn't have a barrister son in real life either). As a total fiction I would have given the film a guarded thumbs up as it is grips the imagination of the viewer but the "inspired by a true story" claim at the opening credits is very misleading. Joan/Melita was a traitor as much as Lord Haw Haw and she continued to support the Russian communist cause even when it was slaughtering millions of its own population.