Movie with Bill Nighy Shows his Splendid Subtle Light - Sensitive but Unflappable, Often Breaking into Humor. This is a Bill Nighy tasty sampler.

“Page Eight” is the BBC “Masterpiece Contemporary” made-for-television movie shown on PBS, Sunday, November 6, 2011. It is written and directed by David Hare, now available on BBC i player. Initial impressions - spontaneous wherefores: the title “Page Eight” but none of its current reviews mentions what this means…guess it’s up to me to tell you, and telling you won’t diminish the value of the story.

There isn’t much passion in any of these old Brits, except for the ever-fiery Judy Davis, the MI5 upstairs officer-in-charge.

In a real world need to brief, analyst Bill Nighy’s character “Johnny” would not be included in an extremely high level meeting. Each member seated at the board table has been given confidential papers (thus bypassing the line of command).

The film shows Johnny in his own private office surrounded by upper echelon responders, not very gritty for an intelligence analyst. Johnny pushes pencils; he is not an operative nor an operator, but he does go right to the crux - which is at the bottom of the document, on page eight.

And this is another Israel-bashing movie in vogue at this time - a token theme. And it is also about those rotten Americans who grab people in order to extract information - yeah, yeah…hasn’t this one been used enough - though they do not speak the “R” word, rendition.

There are many emotionally intimate personal interactions - these are the items to watch carefully and chew over. Note, how you can tell Johnny has decided to change his lifestyle - maybe he’ll be able to buy a cottage in the Cotswold’s - but certainly not as he sells off several of his art collection, one for “sixteen” they say…surely they must mean 160,000 pounds, still not enough to live on. And a small gallery owner wouldn’t have 16 million in safe she keeps unlocked.

Johnny’s art gallery owner-friend goes to her safe, takes out a stack of pound notes and puts them into a Wal-Mart (or similar) opaque small plastic sack. Johnny carries this around with him - open to view - for the rest of the movie. No attempt to hide his get-away cash shows his idiosyncrasies. Reviewers call him a “spook” - an uncouth word (but we know Bill Nighy could never be uncouth). Certainly not in ways that are the fault of the actor, the script makes him look unprofessional.

Then Johnny gives Nancy (his across-the-landing neighbor played by Rachel Weisz,) another of his paintings - he has taken a fancy to her - thus again showing his decision to leave his old line of work, due to intelligence machinations involving the Prime Minister, played by Ralph Fiennes. The painting provided a good wordless visual to move the story along, but again they chose this really ugly painting, surely worth less than $5.00 - is that a kind of mixed message or just ignorance.

When Nancy realizes he’s leaving she asks if she should come along - a halfhearted request. They do kiss but its gratuitous, “feels awkward, uncomfortable, unnecessary,” says Sam Wollaston of “The Guardian,”  This too, is not Bill Nighy’s fault - call the director. Refer to the older-man, younger-woman tenderness of Nighy’s “Girl in the Café.”

Ben Stephenson, controller of BBC drama commented, “David Hare (writer, director) returns to the BBC with this gripping spy thriller and star studded cast, indicative of the quality and ambition of the drama you will see on BBC Two in 2011.” Perhaps Mr. Stephenson shows where he comes from in the film-making process, but this is not a gripping spy thriller…What it does give you are often funny, often complicated real-life details, always with very human responses. These are what makes this hour and 40 minutes quality movie entertainment.

Seems this may be the first of a trilogy - I very much appreciate Bill Nighy so I’ll be watching.