Politics & Power Quote by Rachel Weisz

Weisz is selling you a genre movie while quietly insisting genre is never the point. The opening cadence hits the required marketing beats - "political thriller", "action packed", "very exciting" - a checklist designed to reassure audiences (and financiers) that this story will move. Then she pivots: "but at the same time" isn’t a hedge so much as a claim that the real engine isn’t plot mechanics, it’s ache. "A very big soulful love story" is deliberately oversized language, the kind actors use when they’re trying to rescue a film from being flattened into category.

The key move is her refusal to let the emotional and the political sit in separate lanes. Longing and loss aren’t just character seasoning sprinkled over chase scenes; they are the motive force that makes the political stakes legible. A thriller without longing is procedural. A love story without consequence is decorative. By saying they’re "completely dependent", she’s describing how contemporary prestige storytelling works: public systems (power, surveillance, ideology) become intimate only when filtered through private hunger, and private desire becomes tragic only when it collides with history.

There’s also a savvy subtext about legitimacy. Romance, especially "soulful" romance, can be dismissed as soft; politics and action are culturally coded as serious. Weisz stitches them together so the audience can admit they came for adrenaline while leaving with grief. It’s a pitch, but it’s also a philosophy of storytelling: the heart isn’t a subplot. It’s the plot’s fuse.