The Honorable Woman

Whatever your viewing regimen, Honorable Woman is highly recommended for its distinctive approach, bravura performances, overall digestibility and, yes, degree of difficulty.

The Honorable Woman is a slow-building but gripping story, regardless of where you stand on Mideast politics; Gyllenhaal delivers a remarkably measured and moving performance.

We can confirm that it boasts a string of crackerjack performances from the likes of Stephen Rea as a hangdog spy, Janet McTeer as his spook boss, Lubna Azabal as the housekeeper of Nessa's brother (Andrew Buchan), and Gyllenhaal herself. [25 Jul/1 Aug 2014, p.105]

The Honorable Woman is in many ways, most of them cerebral, an extremely impressive piece of work.

Writer/director Hugo Blick skillfully walks the hairline between a well-paced adventure thriller and a psychological study that gives us enough time to appreciate the nuances of the character we're watching.

Although Blick's structural concept skirts close to mannered gimmickry, it also makes artistic sense. We are slowly but unavoidably drawn into the ever thickening mire of secrets, lies and shifting allegiances in both the lives of the characters and, of course, in the constant strife in the Middle East.

The Honorable Woman certainly doesn’t evoke any enmity. The problem, rather, is that it doesn’t provide enough thrills or momentum to completely reward the viewing commitment of its friends.