Metacritic reviews

James’s sleek telling excels at intertwining the personal and the political with illuminating detail.

A Compassionate Spy borrows the look and feel of a historical espionage thriller and builds some momentum and moral complexity along the way, but it finds its real potency as a generational family drama.

It’s worth being reminded by James’s layered, grippingly told account of a principled betrayal that when it comes to the biggest threats facing the globe, sometimes one person in the right circumstance can make a difference.

A Compassionate Spy is intimate and modest, more about a marriage than geopolitical tensions.

The film demonstrates its director’s characteristic nose for strong material and knack for gripping, straightforward storytelling.

Steve James’ film not only convinces you to believe that a compassionate spy can exist but also to have compassion for a man who committed a traitorous act. And even though the editorial choices are leading in their execution, it’s no secret that A Compassionate Spy is a moving, thoughtful documentary.

The general impression given by this warm, low-key film is that the spying was a simple act of pacifism. Countervailing voices are faint and few; anyone seeking more vigorous pushback will have to look elsewhere.

If A Compassionate Spy is oddly dispassionate for a documentary so attuned to the humanistic inner-workings of history in progress, the film can’t help but find a measure of beauty in the unspoken trust that Ted and Joan placed in one another.

The suggestion that Ted Hall’s actions were that of simple and pure heroism leaves Steve James’s documentary in tension with the more nuanced view that Hall seemed to have of himself.

A Compassionate Spy is less a full companion piece to “Oppenheimer” than an intriguing sidebar.