Closed Circuit movie review & film summary (2013)

The film is not about the investigation into the bombing; blame is quickly assigned to radicalized Turk Farroukh Erdogan (Denis Moschitto) and a trial is scheduled. The only hiccup is that some of the evidence being introduced by the government is so potentially explosive that not even the defendant himself is allowed to see it for himself. In such cases, defendants like Farroukh are allowed two lawyers—one who will defend him in public and a special advocate who defends him during the closed sessions and is allowed to look at the secret evidence, albeit under orders not to divulge said information to anyone, especially the other lawyer.

In Farroukh's case, his public defense will be conducted by Martin Rose (Eric Bana), who snags the gig after his predecessor/mentor commits suicide under suspicious circumstances. In closed court, he will be defended by the ambitious Claudia Simmons-Howe (Rebecca Hall). It turns out that Martin and Claudia once had a brief affair that ended badly, a piece of history that should have forced at least one of them to recuse themselves from the case on ethical grounds. However, neither one wants to give up such a big case and since no one apparently noticed their former romance, they proceed with preparing for their respective trials while effectively setting themselves up for blackmail or worse.

If you have seen a movie—any movie—then you can most likely quickly surmise that nothing about the case is what it seems to be and that just by doing their jobs, both Martin and Claudia are putting themselves in extreme danger at the hands of those who will do anything to prevent their bombshell secrets from being revealed. Rather than go into plot details, I will merely mention that Jim Broadbent plays the seemingly friendly government official, Ciaran Hinds is Martin's superior, Anne-Marie Duff plays a shadowy figure who will do anything to clean up the mess that she has made and Julia Stiles is a New York Times reporter who is smart enough to piece together a lot of the information but not smart enough to figure out what happens to reporters in movies like this who piece together a lot of the information but lack the security of above-the-title billing.

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