A Call to Spy

The real-life exploits of the women behind the setting up of Churchill's spy network in Vichy France receive a heartfelt airing in this wartime drama. Sarah Megan Thomas plays Virginia Hall, an American with a prosthetic leg whose pioneering work for the British did much to disrupt Nazi rule. Thomas (who also produced and wrote the script) gives a suitably committed performance, while Castle star Stana Katic and Radhika Apte are fantastic as, respectively, Hall's handler and a pacifist radio operator. While war-movie clichés crop up and there are lulls in the action, proceedings are enlivened by the arrival of gnashing Nazi Klaus Barbie (Marc Rissmann), who's on a mission to capture "the limping lady". It's no big-budget epic, but director Lydia Dean Pilcher's second feature proves to be a fascinating tale of distaff derring-do.