Joy Division (15) <!-- none onestar twostar threestar fourstar fivestar -->

Not, alas, a biopic of the melodic Mancunian doomsters but a thumpingly earnest spy drama that shuttles between 1945 and the depths of the Cold War. Ed Stoppard plays an adopted Soviet agent operating in London at the start of the 1960s, but still haunted by the memory of the Red Army laying waste through his native Silesia in the last days of the Second World War. Writer-director Reg Traviss deals in the espionage staples of coded messages, fugitive identities and poison-tipped umbrellas, though the texture of Sixties London never progresses beyond a red telephone box and The Shadows on the soundtrack. Le Carré can rest easy.