The Correspondent, film review: Peter Greste thriller on a vitally important topic

A sobering thought hovers around The Correspondent, the opening night movie of this year’s Adelaide Film Festival that will be released nationally on Boxing Day:

Reporting from the chaotic edges of any conflict will never be entirely without risk. But those brave members of the press who put life and limb on the line to report without fear or favour should be protected to do so, as far as humanly possible.

A pillar of democracy, it is an inviolable right that requires protection. And yet the world’s eyes and ears are increasingly under threat, with far too many journalists killed this year alone, the vast majority of them in Gaza.

Watch the trailer for The Correspondent

Helmed by Red Dog director Kriv Stenders, it hurls us headlong into another flashpoint: Cairo just after Christmas 2013, in the wake of President Mohamed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood government being forcefully deposed. Peter Greste, played by Richard Roxburgh, is filling in for another journalist while reporting on the military uprising for Al Jazeera.

An electrical charge courses through the air as he and colleagues Mohamed Fahmy (Julian Maroun) and Baher Mohamed (Rahel Romahn) sound out the word on the street, reporting on the public upheaval that followed. But when Greste returns to his hotel room, enjoying a moment’s respite from the throng, a heavy-handed knock at the door announces the arrival of a cadre of burly men in leather jackets who demand he opens the safe.

These men are not robbers. They are functionaries of the new regime who allege that the wad of cash inside as evidence of Greste’s support of terrorism.

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The Correspondent: First Casualty

Ripped from the headlines and Greste’s memoir, The First Casualty, the film is adapted by Peter Duncan, who penned many episodes of the Roxburgh-led legal comedy Rake. What follows is a sweat-inducingly tense account of the reporter’s 400 days languishing in various Egyptian prisons.

As solid as ever, Roxburgh brings a believable weariness to Greste’s rising tension, however well managed with the painted face of professionalism. But there’s a hint of reckless bravado there, too, in his assertion that he decided to work without a permit because it would have taken too long to clear and he’d have missed the story.

Through his travails in solitary confinement through to be reunited, behind bars, with Fahmy and Mohamed, there remains the niggling sense that, however unjust his incarceration on trumped-up charges, he may or may not have exacerbated the risk posed to all three men in his haste.

This barb is intercut with flashback to another news hot spot, reporting from Mogadishu in 2005 alongside BBC reporter Kate Peyton, depicted by Yael Stone. Again, a hasty decision threw them and their colleagues in harm’s way. How much is a headline worth?

The flashback sequences involving Stone feel a little clumsily stitched into the narrative and tips its hand far too early on the consequences, robbing some of this strand’s impact. But for the most part, The Correspondent is a tightly drawn portrait of one man’s determination to speak truth to power, no matter the consequences. Maroun, in particular, brings an impressive weight to the drama, underlining the human consequences for him and Mohamed, both men with more to lose than Greste.

Ever an amiable screen presence, Romahn is the good cop in this triangle, working all the angles for the audience.

Held tight on Greste, there’s little room to flesh out the supporting cast. But when we move to courtroom drama, the ever-reliable Fayssal Bazzi shines as a silk impatient with the journalist’s insistence he has done nothing wrong, turning the tables on Roxburgh’s Rake days. Hazem Shammas is also welcome in a similarly small but no less impactful role, pulling strings behind the scenes to aid the reporter’s cause.  

The Correspondent: subtle jabs

While in real life, Australians watching the nightly news would witness then Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop talking tough on the issue of freeing Greste, The Correspondent takes a couple of subtle jabs.

First, it depicts a hapless consular presence on the ground in Egypt, then it suggests that perhaps his ultimate redemption lay a little further afield, both interesting angles that could have been teased out a touch more, as could some of the details rounding out the bigger, geopolitical picture and the radiating effects on the locals.

That said, the cinematography is handsome, capturing both the harshly cold surrounds of a stone cell and the blazing sun, with Stenders’ account always muscularly engrossing, standing tall on Roxburgh’s capable shoulders even as it zips through the ordeal at a fair clip.

With everything going on in the world right now, clear-eyed films examining the dangers faced by a fair and free press are vitally important. 

The Correspondent is showing as part of the Adelaide Film Festival. It will be released nationally in Australian cinemas on 26 December 2024.