Closed Circuit **

It's a promising premise: two defense attorneys in London, former lovers, get assigned to a high-profile terrorism case that requires one of them to review top secret information in order to argue for its admission at trial. This information must not be divulged to the other attorney, and the two attorneys must not have anything beyond a purely professional relationship. The two attorneys, played by Eric Bana and Rebecca Hall, decide to lie about their former affair, and find themselves in the thick of a conspiracy that implicates an agency of the government itself, an agency willing to kill to keep its secrets.

There are hidden agendas, double dealing, murderous officials, chases and attacks, and mysterious deaths. It should be exciting stuff, right? Unfortunately the movie is dull and flat, despite the good work of Bana, Hall, and Ciarán Hinds as Bana's friend, also a lawyer. Maybe it's the stuffy bewigged intricacies of English law. Maybe it's the pervasive pessimism of the story, the futility of bucking a powerful and ruthless foe. Maybe it's the lack of a hero, or the lack of a love story. Everything in the movie seems to be told at a level removed from real emotion. In any case, I found it hard to sympathize, and ultimately, to care about these characters.