Author's judgement: 
How many wars have been unleashed, how many friendships, how many divorces have occurred through the fault or because of the truth? The history of human beings is dotted with religions, philosophies, individual or collective mental states based on the presumed declared possession of the unique and indivisible truth, not susceptible to negotiation, not subject to commercialization. Without wanting to go into complex and particularly profound reflections and the difficulty of finding an aphorism among the many on the subject of truth, we propose one close to the topic we are talking about in the film of the week: “Photography is truth, and cinema is truth twenty-four times a second” by Jean-Luc Godard (there are 24 frames that flow in the film).
The title just released in theaters is Power games, signed by the Danish director Per Fly and starring Theo James, Ben Kingsley and Jacqueline Bisset. Not to be confused with the previous 1992 title directed by Phillip Noyce with Harrison Ford and inspired by a novel by Tom Clancy, Attack on the Court of England. In this case, we are talking about a real event, which took place starting in 1995, when the United Nations voted a resolution with which they wanted to support the Iraqi people suffering after the sanctions applied against Saddam Hussein, accused of wanting to prepare weapons of destruction of mass (although never found). The film tells the autobiography of a young UN official who is assigned to the program Oil for food, a project endowed with significant funds intended primarily for basic necessities and services for the population and which instead will prove to be a gigantic source of corruption and malfeasance where numerous multinational companies and as many big names were involved.
The film revolves around the existential as well as professional crisis of the young protagonist when he comes into direct contact with the "truth" of politics, diplomacy, economic interests that dominate and flood everything, going beyond civil rights and people's dignity. Michael doesn't lend himself to the hard and dirty game that his boss, a very powerful director and skilled diplomat, the always phenomenal Sir Ben Kingsley, plots, to which he opposes to the point of breaking the bond that had led him to success and have him indicted. “The first rule in democracy is that reality must not be based on facts, but on general consensus” declares Pasha and makes this concept an unshakable dogma, and on this altar he sacrifices every ethical and moral sense where, in fact, even the truth is overwhelmed and used at will.
The film is affected by an international political climate, unfortunately, distant in time and space from those events. We forget quite easily the atrocities that have taken place in recent years with wars that have devastated entire regions of the world, especially in the Middle East, without then having known, wanted or been able to create a credible alternative. From a strictly technical point of view, the film holds up to its times and rhythms in its specific narrative context: it's not a thriller and the killer's capture is not expected. It keeps what it promises: it does justice to a type of cinema that is somewhat lacking in our parts. It is, in some respects, that "cinema verité" as understood by the French sociologist Edgar Morin in the 60s, where the seventh art is required to "... make a cinema of total authenticity, as true as a documentary but with the content of a novelistic film, that is, with the content of subjective life”. Furthermore, he lays bare one of the great difficulties faced by information: making healthy investigative journalism that does not look at anyone, does not give discounts to the institutions or the powerful on duty. If only for this, Power games it deserves to be seen.
