He seems like a student of cinema who’s able to to pick up on the nuance of scripts and carry them through without pulling back on the action. Director Gavin O’Connor has directed four feature films, each different from the past: the MMA drama Fighter, the sports underdog title Miracle, the gritty cop drama Pride and Glory and the chick flick Tumbleweed. There’s a energetic crop of directors who have made their name on spy/espionage movies, but for this I’d look at someone with a more diverse skillset that may have something new to say about the genre. Sounds like an ideal movie, doesn’t it? Tell Hollywood that. To the company she’s now a rogue operative operative carrying out un-approved missions, and meanwhile she also has to deal with the fallout from offing that Russian general. The best place to start is the initial story-arc, Operation: Broken Ground, wherein the lead character Tara Chace assassinates a former Russian general-turned-arms smuggler that she later discovers was an rogue mission her immediate superior set her on despite the disagreement by his bosses. It’s as if Aaron Sorkin wrote James Bond, peeling back not just the foes on the field but the superiors sniping at her from the corner office.

What Queen & Country has going for it is a strong female lead, a relatively under-exposed organization (in the SIS), and the unique capacity of being about a spy at work - both on the field and in the contemptuous back office. Movie-goers are still reeling from the success of the Bourne Identity movies as post- Bond spy drama series, and on the small screen shows like Homeland and the ill-fated Rubicon have likewise been showing there’s more to espionage thrillers than Ian Fleming. Instead of waiting around, we’ve come up with our idea of how it could work. It’s been continually looked at by movie studios for an adaptation like it’s sister title Whiteout, but no one yet has been able to come up with a formula that’ll crack the code to get the film made. Foreshadowing his celebrated work on DC’s Batwoman and Marvel’s The Punisher by years, it showed a no-nonsense female operative from Britain’s SIS dealing with troubles on the battlefield and in the home office. Launched in 2001 at Oni by writer Greg Rucka and artist Steve Rolston, Queen & Country went for six years and became Rucka’s longest and most expansive story in comics or novels.

It was one of the comics that signaled the beginning of a renaissance in independent comics, taking on the tradition of military comics and spy thrillers and getting inside the heads and the homes of some of the world’s deadliest operatives.

Queen and country rucka