IMDb RATING
6.5/10
2.5K
YOUR RATING
After a newspaper reporter helps expose a Member of Parliament as a possible spy, he finds that there's much more to the story than that.After a newspaper reporter helps expose a Member of Parliament as a possible spy, he finds that there's much more to the story than that.After a newspaper reporter helps expose a Member of Parliament as a possible spy, he finds that there's much more to the story than that.
- Won 1 BAFTA Award
- 7 wins & 2 nominations total
Danny Webb
- Danny Royce
- (as Daniel Webb)
- Director
- Writer
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe name of the airbase is never mentioned. However at one point Nick views a press clipping which states that the (presumed) hit-and-run driving incident occurred in the village of Brandon. That's in Suffolk, adjacent to the US airbase at RAF Lakenheath. (However, the building Nick is seen parked outside when he asks, and is denied, permission to visit the base commander, is not at Lakenheath, it looks more like RAF Uxbridge which would have been easier to get permission to film at, and is also very close to the Shepperton studio where the film was made.)
- GoofsWhile details are secret, it is generally assumed that a nuclear weapon has to be 'armed' before it would explode.
It would be absurd to have bombs in an aircraft that would wipe out the entire airbase if an aircraft crashed on landing.
- Quotes
Vernon Bayliss: Vodka and Coca-Cola. Detente in a glass!
- Crazy creditsThe research done for this film is shown by the acknowledgment at the end of the credits: "The Producers wish to thank the STAFF and MANAGEMENT of THE TIMES NEWSPAPERS FOR THEIR HELP."
Featured review
They're out to get you...
This taut, underrated little thriller might be called a British version of "The Parallax View". Ian Bannen plays a Profumo-like MP targeted by the security services because he knows too much. His career is ruined by muck-raking reporter Gabriel Byrne but the latter's determination to get to the bottom of the story, and his guilt at the death of a colleague (the superb Denholm Elliott), lead him down unexpected political byways...
"Defence of the Realm" can boast excellent location work and a convincing recreation of the vanished world of the "old" hard-drinking Fleet Street. The tone becomes darker and more claustrophobic as the film goes on and the apolitical Byrne enters a paranoid world of car headlights in the rearview mirror, bugged telephones and rifled apartments. The film taps into many of the issues that concerned the British Left in the mid-eighties (secrecy, American missiles on UK soil, the unaccountability of the security services, newspaper obsession with sexual gossip to the exclusion of harder material) and builds to a clever, if shocking, double-twist climax. Well worth locating and viewing.
"Defence of the Realm" can boast excellent location work and a convincing recreation of the vanished world of the "old" hard-drinking Fleet Street. The tone becomes darker and more claustrophobic as the film goes on and the apolitical Byrne enters a paranoid world of car headlights in the rearview mirror, bugged telephones and rifled apartments. The film taps into many of the issues that concerned the British Left in the mid-eighties (secrecy, American missiles on UK soil, the unaccountability of the security services, newspaper obsession with sexual gossip to the exclusion of harder material) and builds to a clever, if shocking, double-twist climax. Well worth locating and viewing.
helpful•537
- heedarmy
- Apr 25, 2001
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Details
- Release date
- Country of origin
- Language
- Also known as
- Button - Im Sumpf der Atommafia
- Filming locations
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross US & Canada
- $750,000
- Opening weekend US & Canada
- $19,938
- Nov 23, 1986
- Gross worldwide
- $750,000
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