Film Review - The Correspondent (2025)

The Correspondent is based on a true story and stars Richard Roxburgh as Peter Greste, an Australian journalist who is asked to fill in for a colleague at Al Jazeera news over the Christmas 2013 period as unrest builds in Egypt but after doing a news story there, he finds himself arrested and thrown in prison causing worldwide outrage over his treatment.

The Correspondent was a movie I was looking forward to as movies about journalists doing what they do more often than not make for compelling narratives and here is no exception, the film works best when you see Greste as the victim of a monstrous injustice, thrown in prison for no real reason except for the fact that he was simply doing his job and yes he has made mistakes in his past (something the film highlights) but he did not deserve to be so horribly treated in the way that he was.

But what sadly doesn’t work as well is Richard Roxburgh’s performance, don’t get me wrong he is a very good actor and has doen great work in the past but here I felt he was a little miscast, for starters he looked way too old to be playing Peter Greste who was only in his late 40s when he was arrested in December 2013 and Roxburgh looks much older and also Greste in real life has a very expressive face and here Roxburgh’s just doesn’t capture that very well, it feels like your looking at the same stern expression most of the time he is on screen.

And so that was the Correspondent and its an okay movie for the most part but it would’ve been better if someone else who was closer in age and appearance to Peter Greste in real life had played that role instead, 3 out of 5.