***SPOILERS*** Hard to follow spy and cover-up movie about an incident at a US Air Force base in the English countryside that's loaded with nuclear missiles that the local population is totally unaware of. That's until a nuclear bomb laden US fighter plane almost crashed in trying to avoid a local runway from a juvenile detention center Steven Dyce, Steve Woodcock. Dyce was killed by th plane on the runway as he was trying to escape from the police with his friend Mickey Parker, Graham Fletcher Cook. That after the two tried to make their getaway in a stolen car.

It's when member of Parliament, or MP for short, labor party bigwig Dennis Markham, Ian Bannen, started snooping around and trying to get to the bottom of what happened that he was exposed in not only cheating on his wife but having a tryst with a hooker named Marinda Court. It was Miss Court who was also involved with the East German military attaché in London Dietrich Kleist, Alexei Jawdokimov, who's also secretly working for the Soviet KGB! That has London tabloid reporter Nick Mullen, Gabriel Bryne, smell a big scoop and get on the story. It's Nick Mullen's friend at the tabloid Vernon Bayliss, Denholm Elliott, who smells a rat in this story and by getting in touch with Markham, who both were once members of the British Communist Party, who tells him that the entire story about his relationship with both Miss Court and Soviet Agent Klesit is pure BS or at least the Kleist part of it. Markham claims that it's really an attempt to cover up the Steven Dyce death and the circumstances surrounding it!

It's after Vernon was mysteriously found dead from a heart attack in his London flat with it being ransacked that Mullen started to realize that the whole sex and spy thing about Markham was a red herring in order to keep the the real reason for trying to destroy Markhm's political career! It's really because of his investigation of the fatal accident that took young Steve Dyce's life! It's then that Mullen gets to work in uncovering what really happened to Dyce which leads to the highest members and most powerful of the British Government! Even higher then the Prime Minster at the time-in 1984-him or,in the person being Margaret Tatcher, herself! And at the same time puts Mullen as well as his partner in uncovering Dyce's death Markham's personal secretary Nina Beckman, Greta Scacchi, lives in serious jeopardy!

Nothing really great here with the exception of the sexy Greta Scacchi getting a chance to show that she's as good an actress as a sex symbol. There's also actor Gabriel Brynes looking and acting like an Irish version of Al Pacino in the movie "Serpico" but in here playing an investigative reporter not an undercover New York plain clothes detective.

P.S There's a photo in the movie that was faked up, by the members of the "Realm", to prove that Markham and Kleist actually knew each other in a photo shoot with Soviet Preimer Leonid Brezhnev taken in Prague in 1979. What we see is Markham and Kleist in the background looking like their good friends by them either winking or smirking at each other. What I noticed in the photo that was a lot more interesting and could have well proved the photo to be a fake is that in it was also the former Soviet Preimer Nikita Khrushchev! Khruschev was in fact dead, he died on Septemer 11, 1971, eight years before the photo was supposedly taken!

Democratic governments are said to work in the public interest. All well and good. However, when that government decides to work in secret, then it becomes an enemy, not only to the people it purports to work for, but is contrary to the spirit of democracy. This is the premise to this film entitled " Defense of the Realm." In this story, our hero Nicholas Mullen (Gabriel Byrne) is an inquisitive newspaper reporter who stumbles across a sensitive story involving the cover-up murder of a school boy. The lad's death is hushed up by government authorities and involves a prominent cabinet official. The case is ultra secret so that when a Parliament official seeks to inquire into the death of the school boy, those who want to keep it from being re-opened, first seek to scandalize him, then discredit the first newsman who helps him, then anyone else who gets involved. After his colleague is found dead, Mullen takes up the challenge of exposing his friend's murder and soon finds himself threatened, then targeted for assassination. The movie is stark drama and with the aid of exceptional actors like Denholm Elliott, Ian Bannen and Robbie Coltrane produces an exciting and heart thumping atmosphere. A fine film and highly recommended as a late night thriller. Excellent! ****

Gabriel Byrne stars in "Defence of the Realm," a 1985 film also starring Denholm Elliott, Greta Scacchi, Ian Bannen and Robbie Coltrane. Byrne plays Mullen, an aggressive newsman who is responsible for a story leading to the downfall of a Parliament member - he was seen leaving a madam's house, as was a KGB agent. However, he soon learns that there's much more to the story than that and that the man has been set up because he knew to much.

This is a very good story with handsome Byrne heading up an excellent cast of foreign faces that will be very familiar to Americans. All of the acting is good, with a standout performance by Denholm Elliott. The beautiful Greta Scacchi, an asset to any production, is totally wasted here, however.

What I liked best about this, and many other British films, is that you have to pay attention - first of all, so that your ears can adjust to the sound of not only the accents but also adjust to the way the British allow room tone to mix in with the dialogue, which we're not used to here. It gives the atmosphere a much more realistic flavor.

Worth seeing.