Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 5/1/2017)

In the Chinese port, a go-between introduces the Jesuits to a bedraggled interpreter Kichijiro (Yosuke Kubozuka), who is desperate to return to his homeland. He jumps out of the boat at the first sighting of land and beckons Rodrigues and Garrpe to follow him to a network of caves, where they meet Ichizo (Yoshi Oida) and Mokichi (Shinya Tsukamoto), the leaders of a small band of Christians who practice their faith in secret in the mountain village of Goto. They know nothing of Ferreira, but offer the priests sanctuary. During the day, they hide in a hole in the ground inside a remote cabin, but they emerge at night to hear confessions, say mass and administer to sacraments to the faithful, who appreciate their courage in risking all to bring them the word of God.

After a while, Rodrigues and Garrpe begin to feel cooped up and decide to venture out into the sunlight. They are spotted by a couple of strangers, however, and are afraid when they return to the cabin under cover of darkness. Fortunately, they are Christians from Kichijiro's island of Tomogi and Rodrigues agrees to sail there to minister to the locals. They are so overjoyed to see him that he feels humbled and feels as though God is working through him, as he gives them simple tokens of their faith. He even doles out the beads from his rosary. But Kikijiro insists he is unworthy to accept a blessing, as he once renounced Jesus by stepping on a carved fumi-e icon and, as a result, his entire family was burnt at the stake in reprisal.

No sooner has he accepted Rodrigues's forgiveness than he returns to Goto to learn that Ichizo has been captured by a ferocious inquisitor, who demands that the villagers hand over the priests or Ichizo, Mokichi and two further hostages will be sent to Nagasaki until the outlaws are detained. Rodrigues and Garrpe offer to leave to spare the quartet, but Ichizo and Mokichi deem it an honour to suffer for the Lord and they are joined by a further volunteer. When no one else comes forward, someone suggests that Kichijiro should go, as Tomogi should share the risk.

A fight breaks out when Kichijiro resists and Rodrigues steps into the breach. But Kichijiro accepts his fate and he surrenders to Inoue when he returns to the village. Rodrigues and Garrpe look on from the rocks as all four men step on the fumi-e placed in the mud. But the inquisitor doubts their sincerity and produces a crucifix and orders the men to spit on it and declare the Virgin Mary to be a whore. Rodrigues winces as Kichijiro apostasies for a second time, but understands his fear. But the other three are bound to wooden crosses on the beach and the Jesuits watch in agony as Ichizo drowns while praying and Mokichi continues to praise God as the waves lash his face.

He survived four days before finally succumbing and being cremated because Inoue refused to allow him a Christian burial. Mourning his loss, Rodrigues and Garrpe agree it would be safer to separate and the former returns to Goto to find it deserted and overrun by feral cats. After sheltering in his burnt-out hut, Rodrigues strikes out across country and is rescued by Kichijiro after he slips and falls down an incline. He is wary of the apostate, even though he cooks him fish and begs to be shriven for lacking the faith shown by Ichizo and Mokichi. But, as they resume their journey, Kichhijo betrays Rodrigues for a handful of coins and he is forced to kneel with Monica {Nana Komatsu} and a group of captured peasants, who feel honoured to be held alongside a cleric.

On being taken to Nagasaki, Rodrigues is visited in his bamboo cell by a cynical interpreter (Tadanobu Asano). They discuss the merits of Christian and Buddhist faith before the stranger urges the Jesuit to disown his deity and he will be allowed to go free and live with a Japanese wife like Ferreira before him. Rodrigues is dismayed to hear the name and refuses to accept that such a dedicated soldier of Christ would renege so cravenly. He is even more surprised when the kindly Japanese who spoke with him after his capture turns out to be the ferocious inquisitor Inoue (Issey Ogata), who allows him to argue the case for the universal truth of Christianity before returning him to his cell.

Comforted by the strength of Monica and his fellow prisoners, Rodrigues sees the face of Jesus in the floorboards (as he had earlier seen his own reflection in a stream morph into the Saviour's image). But he is troubled when Kichijiro enters the compound during a downpour to insist that he rejected the blood money and now merely wants forgiveness. Inoue has him placed in Monica's cell and Rodrigues has to fight down his repugnance in order to hear Kichijiro's confession. However, he remains convinced that he can reason with Inoue and puts on clean robes in order to take tea with him. The old man asks Rodrigues why he thinks his Christian tree will grow in foreign soil and suggests he reflects upon the fact that a husband is deemed wise if he rejects a barren wife in order to marry someone who will give him heirs.

But, shortly after Rodrigues is returned to his cell, Monica and four of her co-religionists are lined up in the courtyard and ordered to step upon a fumi-e. They refuse and one of their number is beheaded with a single stroke of a bushido blade. Rodrigues howls in anguish and then has to look on as Kichijiro is brought before the icon and he betrays his faith for a fourth time before being allowed to depart. Powerless to protect his friends, Rodrigues watches them being frog-marched out of the compound and he see them again the following day, as they are ushered along a beach in the company of Garrpe. The interpreter informs Rodrigues that Garrpe has been told that he is no longer a recusant and, thus, when Monica and her cohorts are wrapped in straw shrouds and pushed into the sea, Garrpe drowns in a fruitless bid to save them and the grieving Rodrigues is tormented by the interpreter for killing him with his pride.

Alone in his cell, Rodrigues pleads for a sign and is crestfallen by God's continued silence. One day, he is taken by kago to a Buddhist temple. The interpreter asks if he is disturbed by the smell of incense or cooking meat before reminding him that this is a holy place where beliefs are held as vehemently as in any church. As they wait, Ferreira appears with a minder and he can barely bring himself to return Rodrigues's gaze. He describes how he was hung upside down in a pit with a nick in a vein in his neck so that he bled slowly. Scarcely able to believe what he is hearing, the priest listens as his former confessor recalls stepping on the fumi-e and falling on his face in the dust. But, while he initially experienced remorse, he has learned to embrace happiness through the study of Japanese customs and through teaching his benefactors about astronomy and medicine.

Rodrigues accuses him of betraying the mission started by Francis Xavier. But Ferreira explains that his message about the Sun of God was mistakenly accepted by converts who thought he was referring to the Sun that rose every day. He suggests that he has found a form of God through accepting that there can be no single theological truth and he implores Rodrigues to search his soul for a way of seeing beyond the doctrine that has clouded his judgement. But the younger man declares Ferreira to be a disgrace and he departs with sadness at having failed his student twice.

They meet again, however, when Rodrigues is paraded through the streets on the back of a mule and placed in Ferreira's old cell at Inoue's headquarters. Once again, the Jesuit calls on God to answer him, but all he can hear are the cries of five Christians hanging upside down in pits in the torchlit courtyard. Ferreira appears to remind Rodrigues that they are suffering because of him, as they care more about letting him down than serving a God they don't really understand. As he is led from his cell, Rodrigues sees Kichijiro, who has been brought to the palace. Standing in the darkness, the priest hears the voice of the Lord telling him that he owes it to his disciples to spare their lives rather than cling to a belief that can now only benefit himself. Thus, Rodrigues steps on the fumi-e and collapses on the ground, as the interpreter beckons to the guards to free the prisoners.

The final part of the story is narrated by German merchant Dieter Albrecht (Béla Baptiste), who remembers seeing Ferreira and Rodrigues identifying Christian artefacts being smuggled into the country by Dutch traders. He reveals that Rodrigues continued this work after Ferreira died and was rewarded by Inoue with the estate and widow (Asuka Kurosawa) of a wealthy nobleman. However, for the rest of his life, he was forced to perform the rite of `koboru' and even trod on the icon on the day that Kichijiro was taken away for hiding a religious token in his clothing. Yet, as the film ends, the camera braves the flames engulfing Rodrigues's coffin to show that his wife had slipped into his hands the little carved cross that Mokichi had given him in Goto.

As with the earlier visions of the Holy Face, this closing shot feels slightly clumsy and suggests that Scorsese retains more than a little sentimental reverence for his erstwhile religion. But he and Cocks essentially steer clear of detailed theological discussion and complex historical context in a picture that strives so hard to be accessible that its influences would appear to number David Lean's The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Nagisa Oshima's Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (1983) and Roland Joffé's The Mission (1986).

This determination to reach the widest possible audience seemingly explains the selection of The Amazing Spider-Man and Kylo Ren as Rodrigues and Garrpe. But Andrew Garfield and Adam Driver bring such contrasting acting techniques to their psychologically sketchy roles that their mannerisms prove as distracting as their accents. Yet, while it's difficult to decipher precisely which parts of Portugal Garfield, Driver, Hands and Neeson hail from, their strenuous attempts at piety and intensity often undermine performances that seem markedly more mannered than those of Japanese co-stars Shinya Tsukamoto, Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke Kubozuka and Issey Ogata (who introduces some cruel levity while struggling rather more than his compatriots with the English dialogue). The estimable Driver is regrettably underused, as he disappears after the clerics part ways and only returns for his frustratingly vapid death scene. But the earnest Garfield is often found wanting when it comes to conveying cerebral anguish and extremes of emotion and one can't help but think that this enervating situation might have been averted with some less marquee-conscious casting.

By contrast, Scorsese's direction is rigorously classical, as he conspires with production and costume designer Dante Ferretti and cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto to give the enterprise the kind of intimate celluloid spectacle associated with early CinemaScope epics. Thelma Schoonmaker's editing is equally meticulous, as she establishes the pace that allows Scorsese to switch smoothly between intimate conversations in confined spaces to grander set-pieces like the tidal crucifixion staged on the expertly scouted and often mist-covered Taiwanese locations. Yet, despite realising a long-cherished ambition, Scorsese doesn't always manage to convey his deep fascination with the material or its potently pertinent message about keeping the faith in the face of intolerance and intimidation.

Six decades have passed since Chilean polymath Alejandro Jodorowsky first turned his hand to cinema by adapting a Thomas Mann novella for The Severed Heads (1957). Shuttling between Mexico and France, he finally followed this 20-minute debut (which was rediscovered in 2006) with Fando y Lis (1968), which stuck so closely to Fernando Arrabal's concept of a `theatre of cruelty' that it was banned in several conservative countries. But, while Jodorowsky achieved cult status with El Topo (1970) and The Holy Mountain (1973), he withdrew from all film-making - bar the children's film, Tusk (1980) - after his bid to adapt Frank Herbert's Dune was derailed in the early 1970s. Indeed, he only completed Santa Sangre (1981) and The Rainbow Thief (1990) over the next three decades, as he devoted himself to comic books and psychomagic.

Typically, when he did make an overdue return to the screen, the eightysomething Jodorowsky declared that The Dance of Reality (2013) was the first entry in a five-part autobiographical odyssey that now continues with Endless Poetry, which starts exactly where its predecessor ends, with the young Alejandro Jodorowsky (Jeremias Herskovits) leaving provincial Tocopilla for the Chilean capital, Santiago, with his judgemental father, Jaime (Brontis Jodorowsky), and his doting mother Sara (Pamela Flores), who sings all of her dialogue.

Docking at a cardboard cut-out quayside, the family settles down in the bustling Matucana Street, whose façade is artfully rolled down on a painted backdrop over the modern-day site, as the adult Alejandro Jodorowsky (acting as a kind of chorus) recalls the shock of city life after his backwater childhood. Jaime opens a shop and hires a stiltwalker and a dwarf to impersonate Adolf Hitler (Cesar Armazan) as part of a promotion declaring war on prices. But Alejandro has no intention of following in his father's footsteps and is appalled when Jaime forces him to give an impoverished shoplifter a brutal public kicking. Jaime is dismayed by his son's reticence and accuses him of being gay when he catches him reading the poetry of Federico García Lorca.

The rebuke rankles and Alejandro has many a sleepless night fretting about his sexuality before he realises he is straight when he has no desire to kiss his flirtatious, lapdog-carrying cousin, Ricardo (Diego Carrasco). Surviving an earthquake and Jaime's temper, Alejandro moves into an artistic commune with symbiotic dancers Cana (Kaori Ito) and Gordo (Eduardo Jahnke), supratenor Alberto Rubio (Rony Ancavilu), ultrapianist Gustavo Becerra (Felipe Peña Venegas) and polypainter Hugo Marín (Felipe Pizarro Sáenz De Urtury). He gives them a puppet show before venturing to the Café Iris, where he meets flame-haired punk siren Stella Díaz (also Pamela Flores). She makes him show her his penis before taking him under her wing in the seedier side of the city. However, she makes him jealous by swooning over rival poet Nicanor Parra (Felipe Ríos) and Stella is so impressed by Alejandro's devotion that she carves his initial into the back of his hand and promises to teach him everything she knows about non-penetrative sex, while also leading him everywhere by the testicles so that everyone knows he is her property.

Alejandro steals from his parents so they can dedicate themselves to poetry. But, even though she saves him from being assaulted in a gay bar, he feels he is becoming her mirror image and, after he finds the suicidal Ricardo hanging from a lamp post outside the University of Chile, he asks her for 40 days apart. When he returns, Stella reveals that she is pregnant by another man and has bobbed her hair. She presents him with her shorn locks in a box at the Café Isis and he howls in dismay at losing her love and her left-field guidance.

Returning to the workshop where he makes puppets with Veronica (Montserrat Lopez), Alejandro helps Luz (Camila Muzard) bid farewell to painter André Racz (Ali Ahmad Sa'Id Esber aka Adonis) by giving them lookalike dolls so that they can never be separated. The old artist is so grateful for the gesture that he gives Alejandro the key to his studio and he throws a party and invites guests to disclose their secrets on the Chair of Truth. A man with no hands is helped to caress his fiancée by some willing volunteers, while poet Enrique Lihn (Leandro Taub) declaims with such wit and power that Alejandro recognises a kindred spirit.

He goes to Enrique's house and is delighted to find the walls of his room covered with scribbled verses and notes. They go for a walk and decide to walk in a straight line, even though it takes them through the bedroom of an elderly woman and through an underground car park guarded by fierce dogs. The pair agree that poetry should be an act of subversion and they fling meat and eggs at the members of the academy and daub a statue of Pablo Neruda with black paint, so that he becomes the invisible man.

Through Enrique, Alejandro meets tarot reader Marie Lefevre (Carolyn Carlson), who gives him a reading using a naked medium and interpretative dance. Alejandro is puzzled by her revelations and Jodorowsky reassures his younger self that he is right to commit himself to enjoyment and expression, as he has no regrets about the kind of life he has led. Consequently, he has permission from his own conscience to pursue his ambitions in life and love. However, it also means having the freedom to make mistakes, as Alejandro alienates Enrique by sleeping with his menstruating dwarf girlfriend Pequeñita (Julia Avendaño) after thwarting her suicide attempt. She is distraught at being jilted and undergoes electroshock treatment. But she cannot forget Enrique and begins drinking heavily and she is only delivered from her torment by a man her own size after she vomits into his hat in the Café Iris.

Feeling guilty at betraying his friend, Alejandro has a pair of green clown shoes made and he is wearing them when he bumps into a man in the park, who introduces himself as Carrot the Clown, who performed with Jaime in Tocopilla. He invites Alejandro to join his troupe and he is beaten with rubber clubs for breaking wind as a foreigner in the circus ring. Left alone in the spotlight, Alejandro laments that the audience keeps laughing at his misfortune and, insisting that he is a poet not a buffoon, he strips naked to crowd surf up to the gods.

Miserable at being estranged from Enrique, Alejandro brings a wreath to the Café Iris and begs his forgiveness. Pequeñita informs him that he is the father of the baby she is carrying and her companion slaps Enrique across the face in jealousy. Alejandro urges him to snap out of his torpor, but the mood is lifted when Jaime and Sara arrive in their nightwear to break the news that their house has burned down. Rather than share their misery, however, Alejandro is overjoyed at having his past destroyed and tosses tinsel stars into the air before leading a joyful procession to the site, where he dances in the street and sends one of his mother's charred girdles floating across the city on some red balloons. Enrique encourages Alejandro to throw himself into the carnival celebrations. But, as revellers wearing red devil and black-and-white skeleton costumes congregate from adjoining streets, Alejandro grows drunkenly maudlin and throws up in the yard of a furniture shop, while dressed as a pierrot with angelic wings. He complains that he will age and die and that his achievements will be forgotten before he has rotted away. He smashes a mirror in his rage, but Jodorowsky sits besides him and reassures him that acceptance comes with age and you forget your disappointments and shortcomings in the face of gratitude.

Buoyed by the prospect of becoming a butterfly, Alejandro rejoins the throng. Indeed, when Parra recommends that he abandons poetry to get a degree and become a teacher, Alejandro becomes more certain than ever of his vocation to change the world. The 1952 election of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (Bastián Bodenhöfer) convinces Alejandro to leave Chile and help André Breton save Surrealism in Paris. He drops into the Café Iris to say goodbye to Enrique and his friends. They are despondent because the people have been duped into believing the empty promises of a fascist. But, as Alejandro tries to block the path of the uniformed Ibáñez on his white horse, the crowd marches around him, brandishing swastika flags and the brooms that will sweep away corruption and wearing blank-faced masks to suggest the extent to which they have been brainwashed by a cunning populist.

Leaving his entourage with a ditty of farewell, Alejandro walks along the jetty to his boat. He turns to see Jaime berating him for leaving without seeing his parents. Unwilling to listen to advice or warnings that he is going to a foreign land without being able to speak a word of the language, Alejandro pushes Jaime away for being a lousy father. He kicks him while he is down and Jaime begs for forgiveness and insists that he always tried to do the right thing. As he reaches out for a last handshake, Jodorowsky arrives to push his younger self into a proper embrace, as he knows that Alejandro will never see Jaime again and that this represents his own last chance to make amends for the fact that he didn't shed a single tear on learning of his father's death.

Consequently, Alejandro thanks Jaime for all his emotional indifference, atheism and grumpiness, as rebelling against these traits helped shape his own character. He shaves his head and moustache and kisses him twice on the lips before leaving with Jaime's blessing for the next leg of his adventure. As his mother comes to the edge of the jetty to join her husband, Alejandro bobs away on a small purple boat with a winged skeleton standing behind him. He realises he still has much to achieve and even more to learn. But, as the screen fades to white, he also knows he has made the right choice.

Played with gusto by a splendid ensemble that includes brothers Brontis and Adan Jodorowsky, this is an idiosyncratic and inventive rite of passage that reaffirms why Alejandro Jodorowsky is such a cult icon. His production design is particularly impressive, with Christopher Doyle's vibrantly coloured imagery evocatively contrasting the ready-made Matucana hangings and the mocked-up steam locomotive with the sleek interior of the Café Iris. The ingenuity of the setting is matched by the audacity of scenes like Alejandro and Pequeñita's coupling to Fred Astaire's rendition of `Cheek to Cheek' and the ambition of the carnival shot that has hundreds of skeletons and devils (some of whom form a brass band) merging mesmerisingly into a thrilling tableau.

Some might complain that the action is excessively episodic, with Alejandro lurching between encounters and eccentrics without seeming to develop much as either a man or an artist, despite coming to see how inextricably linked the lyrical and the everyday are in his maturing mind. Indeed, several of the characters are two dimensional, despite the efforts of the magnificent Pamela Flores (in an impishly Freudian dual role as Alejandro's mother and lover) and the dashing Leandro Taub, who always seems more rakishly bohemian than the willingly guileless, but sometimes staid Adan Jodorowsky. But, even when it seeks to shock and pushes its magic realist luck, this remains a sincere and accessible saga, whose puckish wit, satirical sweep and affection for the unconventional recall Federico Fellini in his pomp and reveal a new side of the 87 year-old Jodorowsky that suggests there will be plenty more surprises in store in the subsequent instalments if the gods and the financiers (and crowdfunders) prove benevolent.

Finally, this week, ace documentarist Alex Gibney offers a timely and perceptive insight into the dangers posed by state-sponsored hacking in Zero Days. Taking its title from an undetected software flaw that can be exploited by outside operators, this is a complex and fast-moving overview that could easily overwhelm those who let their attention wander for a fraction of a second. But, notwithstanding the surfeit of jargon and institutional abbreviations, this makes for essential viewing in an unpredictable period. Yet, for all its urgency and acuity, this lacks the potency of such past Gibney outings as Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (2005), Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (2012), Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream (2012) and We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks (2013).

From the outset, it's clear that Gibney has stumbled on to a subject that is so combustible that the majority of his talking heads refuse to discuss it or its potential ramifications. First discovered in June 2010 by Sergey Ulasen in Belarus, Stuxnet was a virulent computer worm that sent shockwaves through the global security network. Yet, such was its sophistication that it proved almost impossible to trace to its source and Gibney consults Eric Chien and Liam O'Murchu from Symantec and Muscovite Eugene Kaspersky and Vitaly Kamluk for their views on the malware's make-up. German control system security consultant Ralph Langner recognised immediately that this was a major threat. But, such was its bug-free density that it took Symantec a month of deep analysis to detect Stuxnet's payload.

Capable of spreading without user activation, it contained four zero days and this convinced the experts that it could not have been programmed by criminals or hacktivists. However, the fact that Stuxnet employed digital certificates from two companies in Taiwan and used a programmable logic controller to manipulate a Siemens device enabled the analysts to identify that the virus was creating dummy threats to disguise the fact it had one specific target. As Stuxnet was most prevalent in Iran, this led the Symantec team to deduce from a series of gas pipeline explosions and the violent deaths of some leading nuclear scientists that Stuxnet was aimed at the Natanz fuel enrichment plant housing the Islamic Republic's uranium-processing centrifuges.

Gibney seeks the advice of New York Times National Security Correspondent David Sanger, who explains how the United States helped Iran start its nuclear programme under the Shah. But, as former White House WMD tsar Gary Samore points out, this policy changed following the revolution in 1979 and ex-CIA officer Rolf Mowatt-Larssen concedes it was an act of gross negligence on America's part when Iran received covert assistance from Pakistan. Olli Heinonen, a veteran inspector from the International Atomic Energy Agency, jokes that the Iranians tried to claim that the facility had been built to irrigate the desert. But it was well run and progressed rapidly in the face of Western obstacles that Emad Kiyaei of the American Iranian Council suggests enabled President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to win popular support for the initiative.

Yet, while George W. Bush and Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu were bent on slowing Iran's nuclear advance, counter-terrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke and former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden stress that neither had military options available. Onetime Intelligence Minister Yuval Steinitz, Israeli Defence Intelligence commander Amos Yadlin and Yossi Melman, the author of Spies Against Armageddon, similarly concur that Israel had to tread carefully, even though Iran posed a genuine threat to national security. So, Washington and Tel Aviv decided to co-operate on a computer assault that would be difficult to detect and attribute to its originating source.

As Langner examined footage and photographs of Ahmadinejad visiting the underground bunkers at Nanatz, he realised that configurations on the computer screens in the images corresponded to the Stuxnet programme and Symantec ran an experiment to show how the worm could be used to sabotage code designed to inflate a balloon. Keen to find out who would sponsor such `real world physical destruction', Gibney made contact with some intel insiders (played as a fictional and digitised CIA and NSA agent by Joanne Tucker), who agreed to speak in return for anonymity. She claimed that the NSA and CIA joined forces with GCHQ in Cheltenham and Mossad's 8200 unit, while Sanger reveals that Defence Secretary Robert Gates greenlit Stuxnet before passing it over to the newly created US Cyber Command at Fort Meade, Maryland.

Staff Judge Advocate Gary D. Brown and NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis explain how USCC gave the country an offensive cyber capability and Hayden and Sanger discuss how malware was disseminated across the planet in 2009 to give American agencies the ability to manipulate, misdirect and sabotage foreign computer systems. Chien and O'Murchu reveal how Stuxnet (codenamed `Olympic Games') caused the centrifuges to malfunction by operating too quickly or too slowly, while hiding information about the breakdown so that the Iranians attributed the foul-ups to human error and had a number of key scientists assassinated for their failure.

President Obama had misgivings about pushing too hard in order to drive the Iranians to the negotiating table. But Israel wanted a more aggressive form of Stuxnet introduced to speed up the process and this led to a change of code and the detection in Belarus. This enabled the Symantec analysts to understand how USB sticks belonging to ancillary companies were used to bridge the `air gap' protecting Natanz from outside contamination. However, while the Israelis felt that the need to beat upgraded firewalls made the spread of Stuxnet a worthwhile risk, the Americans were furious, especially when the virus was intercepted by the Russians and the Iranians without impacting sufficiently on the latter's nuclear programme. Ironically, nobody had told Seán Paul McGurk, Director of Cybersecurity in the Department of Homeland Security about Stuxnet and he launched an investigation believing it to be an attack on the United States. Hayden dismisses this as one of those things that sometimes happens in the world of covert operations. But White House involvement in cyber-hacking emerged in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden and Clarke and Hayden join Sanger in claiming that the shroud of secrecy over this issue is currently too dense to allow a mature discussion, as was the case with nuclear weapons in the mid-1980s.

Mowatt-Larssen thinks it's foolish to keep denying the US role in Stuxnet, while Gibney's composite interviewee believes that Israel should have been held to account for blowing a joint operation by acting alone. Hayden fears that Pandora's Box has been opened and that the Chinese and Russians will follow suit because there are no rules of engagement. Yadlin and Brown think the terminology of warfare needs to be tailored to the cyber realm so nations know where the lines of delineation are. But Sanger worries that it's impossible to monitor such a secretive sphere and he and Clarke speculate about the consequences of a cyber attack on US power and Internet systems.

He also stresses that America is the most vulnerable society on Earth to cyber attack and Clarke recalls how Iran exacted its revenge by wiping the systems at the Saudi Aramco oil company and launching a surge attack on US banks. Kiyaei hails the formation of the Iranian Cyber Army and wonders how proud the originators of Stuxnet felt when they realised the Tehran can fight back. But the composite whistleblower reveals that this was a back alley system compared to Nitro Zeus, which had the capacity to shut Iran down.

Sanger and Mowatt-Larssen question how many Americans want to live in such an uncerain world, while Clarke declares that talks have to begin soon before a catastrophe occurs. It might have taken three decades to agree nuclear, biological and chemical weapon treaties, but they made the planet safer and he urges the new administration to start the process as soon as possible, especially in light of the nuclear deal achieved with Iran. He may well have been anticipating a Democratic win in the 2016 presidential election and subsequent events have exposed the shocking extent of American vulnerability. Clearly, we live in more dangerous times than we might previously have anticipated.

Given the unsettling nature of the under-regulated and `over-classified' subject matter and the imminent dangers it poses, this could easily have lapsed into sensationalism and/or jingoism. But Gibney is too grounded a film-maker to succumb to such cheap tactics and, thus, this cogent and visually innovative treatise provokes considered thought rather than knee-jerk outrage or panic. He does use Will Bates's lowering score and Sarah Dowland's light-up maps and sinister screeds of 3-D code to give proceedings a thriller feel, while some of the experts indulge in a bit too much techno-speak. But this is more restrained and lay-friendly than Werner Herzog's Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, with which it shares many themes and concerns.

Perhaps understandably, some of the high-level contributors skirt around the issues. But Gibney is to be commended for the breadth of perspective he secures, with the Russian, Israeli and German experts making for fascinating contrast with the Americans and with the composedly militant Emad Kiyaei. He may not make the smoothest transition from the forensic assessment of Stuxnet to the wider survey of the current state of cyber belligerence. But, in such an instance, topicality counts for more than structure and style.