London Alert

London Alert is written as an ‘entertainment’ in the sense that Graham Greene used the term to describe his fun to read novels with serious underlying content. Starting from a masculine perspective and ending with a feminine twist, this is the story of a boy, called Holt, whose parents are killed in a car crash. He later joins a special department of the British secret service as a backroom ideas man whose role is to anticipate what terrorists and the like might try to perpetrate. Partly so that an eye can be kept on him, he is occasionally partnered with ‘Miss Innocent’ – an agent so angelic looking that colleagues were betting on when she would lose her virginity. Holt immediately fell out with the in-house psychiatrist, a truly nasty piece of work who cannot be fired because he knows so many top peoples’ secrets. Holt and Miss Innocent have to take a revealing test at a mock hotel set up by the service before being issued with a ‘honeymoon kit’ by Q at MI6. (Pretending to be on their honeymoon would enable them to take photos of buildings without inviting suspicion and allow them to share a room for safety and economy.) Mission creep means Holt has to go undercover to unmask the mysterious Owl who wants to make England great again. It is not all doom and gloom, for prior to his initiation test, the Owl has him evaluated by the wife of a billionaire with ulterior motives. As the Owl targets London, police mistake children for terrorists, airliners have nowhere to land, and a warship wrecks Tower Bridge. Holt’s relationship with Miss Innocent gathers pace, but he can never be sure whether it is all an act on her part. Their idyll is shattered by shocking news that sows discord between them and makes Miss Innocent regret having let herself be plucked out of drama school by the service when she could have had a great acting career. Humour, satire, controversial ideas and emotion, coupled with visually exciting scenes that will surely make it a great film.