Film was misleading and did not portray the 1960s accurately.

Rating: 3/10 (19 April 2009)

*************POSSIBLE SPOILERS************************************
I've just got to get it on record somewhere. Any young person who didn't know better would think it was a conservative government which closed down the pirate stations in the 1960s. Kenneth Branagh's minister speaks (or tries to speak) like a postwar "toff". He lives in a large country house with servants and is thoroughly nasty bit of work. Obviously a tory eh? Or so the audience is supposed to think.
In fact it Anthony Wedgwood Benn (as he was then known) who introduce the act Marine Broadcasting Offences Act when he was Postmaster General in Harold Wilson's first Labour government. He was possibly the most left wing member of that government.
Curtis doesn't actually lie in the film but he does his best to mislead. I suppose he just couldn't help his political prejudices showing through.
Also, the idea of any British government minister of that era ordering an underling to allow people to drown at sea is just too ridiculous for words.
The dialogue was totally unbelievable. In those days, British people did not speak in the way portrayed. They did not use phrases like "you guys". The only people I ever heard use that word were Americans on television and in the films. It would have been valid for the Philip Seymour-Hoffman to refer address them as "guys" but nobody else.
Finally, on the blackboard next to the darts board, there was a seven with a line through it-a continental seven. In those days I doubt if you could have found a British person who would write a seven like that. It's quite common now I agree but in the 1960s was just about unknown in this country.
None of this may be important to those who weren't alive in those days (after all, I wonder how accurately films set in the 19th century portray those times) but for people like me who were around then, even if I was only a child, it just made the film a little bit ridiculous.
I know Curtis' films aren't meant to be realistic but all this is just careless and portraying the government minister as a tory is a bit malicious and very misleading.
I enjoyed the soundtrack (which was the reason I went to see it) but all the above badly spoilt the film for me.