Our Kind of Traitor (2016)

The recent success of the superbly staged BBC production of John Le Carré's "The Night Manager" with Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie must have been music to the ears of the producers of "Our Kind of Traitor". Was it the case that the film was held back by the studio for that very reason – to ride the coat tails of that success? When you consider that principal photography of this pic was finished back in June 2014 (TWO THOUSAND AND FOURTEEN!) this becomes a definite suspicion. Because unfortunately, it's really not very good.

Ewan McGregor and Naomie ("Moneypenny") Harris play struggling couple Perry and Gail, going through a bit of a sticky patch, emotionally and sexually. (They must be, since they can't even seem to get it together on holiday in Marrakesh where – frankly – romance and libido come out of the taps with the running water).

One evening, after Gail strops off to "do some work", university lecturer Perry falls in with larger than life Dima (Stellan Skarsgård), a character who with his entourage reminds you immediately why having loud rich Russians in foreign holiday destinations is one of the curses of this new century. After many years of serving as the money-man for a Russian Mafia boss, Dima is now working for his unpredictable and merciless son, 'The Prince' (Grigoriy Dobrygin) who (for no readily apparent reason within the plot) seems to bump off his financier and his immediate family after big deals complete.

One such big deal for Dima is approaching in Berne,with potentially compromising consequences for high level British politicians and bankers. Dima begs for Perry's help to use this information to save his family by turning informant to MI6. Perry passes on the request to MI6 operative Hector (Damien Lewis) who struggles to persuade his boss Matlock ("Sherlock"'s Mark Gatiss) to buy into the scheme. This leaves Hector, Perry and Dima in a "Mind The Gap" position, as they desperately try to escape the vengeance of the Prince and his henchmen without a safe harbour.

It's difficult to pin down exactly where the issues are with this film. It is all just rather dull and predictable. Everything you expect to happen, does, and exactly when you expect it to. I haven't read the book (to be honest, I have never managed to get to the end of a Le Carré novel! #shortattentionspan) so I'm unaware of whether the issue lies with the source material or the screenplay by Hossein Amini ("Drive"; "The Two Faces of January").

Naomi Harris is personable enough as the lawyer/wife, but is given absolutely nothing else to do other than review a contract and babysit: given the director is a woman, this is a surprisingly retrograde storyline for women in film. McGregor doesn't really convince in the Hitchcock 'fish-out-of-water-James-Stewart' role. The Russian 'baddies' emphasise their 'baddiness' by beating up woman, which feels unnecessary and gratuitous. This allows Perry to get another couple of 'knight in shining armour' badges on his Boy Scout sleeve (again, neither realistic or believable). Damien Lewis is all pipe-and-slippers in the MI6 role, probably not doing his credentials for Bond much good.

The one role that really does work is Skarsgård as the jovial Russian, who dives into the role with great energy, delivering a full-on but convincing accent. He is eminently watchable throughout. It's also good to see

Fmovies: Not the best big-screen adaptation of a John LeCarre novel but even a second-rate LeCarre offers its pleasures. The plot of "Our Kind of Traitor" may be a tad far-fetched but then the plots of most good spy yarns often are. The Cold War having ended it's the Russian Mafia who take centre-stage here and as the Russian oligarch who wants to defect Stellan Skarsgard is one of the best things in the picture. Indeed, it's well cast throughout, (Damian Lewis is particularly good as a cynical MI6 operative), and typically there is some nice location work nicely shot by DoP Anthony Dod Mantle. If the director Sussana White doesn't do anything particularly innovative with the material at least she doesn't muck things up. Minor, then, but also surprisingly entertaining, too.

John le Carré does not exist. "John the Square" (as understood in French) is the pen name of British author David Cornwell. For those who don't know who he is, Cornwell is a former member of Great Britain's Security Service and, later, his country's Secret Intelligence Service (perhaps better known as MI5 and MI6, respectively). He left the spy game in 1964 to pursue his burgeoning career as a writer of espionage novels. Now, if none of this sounds familiar, maybe these titles will: "The Tailor of Panama", "The Constant Gardener", "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", "A Most Wanted Man". These are his novels which made it to the big screen just since the beginning of this century and have attracted the participation of actors Philip Seymour Hoffman, Gary Oldman, Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz (who won an Oscar for her efforts). Writing as le Carré, one of Cornwell's more recent novels to become a feature film is "Our Kind of Traitor" (R, 1:48), a story which continues the author's tradition of setting his roller-coaster-like plots against a backdrop of big ideas, but this one is set in a greater variety of international locations than usual and has narrative that's been described as somewhat Hitchcockian.

Peregrine "Perry" Makepiece (Ewan McGregor) is a college professor whose marriage to successful attorney (barrister, to be specific), Gail Perkins (Naomie Harris) is going through a rough patch. He had recently slept with one of his students and he feels that his professional accomplishments are inferior to those of his wife. The couple takes a short vacation to Marrakesh, Morocco in an effort to put a spark back into their marriage. Instead, Perry ends up hanging out with a larger-than-life Russian man named Dima (Stellan Skarsgård) whom he meets in a local bar. In the space of just a couple days, Perry accepts Dima's generous but forceful invitations to drink together, to play tennis and to attend a couple parties. Gail joins Perry at the second party, but is unhappy about how it cuts into their alone time, and when Perry disappears for a while, Gail wonders what he's up to. Fortunately (and unfortunately) Perry is just talking privately with Dima, who reveals himself to be more than just a friendly Russian businessman.

Dima tells Perry that he launders money for the Russian mob and is concerned that he is about to be asked to "resign" (which would mean that Dima's family would end up "resigning" with him). Before any of that can happen, Dima wants to defect to the UK. He asks Perry to deliver to MI6 a memory stick with the names of British officials being bribed by the Russians to grease the skids for a major banking deal. Dima hopes this information will be enough for MI6 to grant asylum to Dima and his family in exchange for further intel. Dima says that Perry is the only one he can trust, and Perry is just kind and honorable enough to want to help save Dima and his family. Perry is also pretty naïve, thinking that he can "just" give the files to MI6 and be done. Perry soon finds out differently, as does Gail who also gets roped in.

An MI6 agent known as Hector (Damian Lewis) is keen to follow up on this lead, but it won't be easy. Hector's boss doesn't think there's enough to go on and thinks that Hector is motivated by revenge against a former supervisor (Jeremy Northam) who may be involved in the bribery scandal. So, Hector

Our Kind of Traitor fmovies. I usually love John Le Carre's books, but I didn't think much of Our Kind of Traitor at all. In fact it left me with almost no memory of the story except a vague outline, which was very handy when it came to watching the film. I enjoyed the screen version much more. The adaptation is good, the action was paced far better than the novel, and the acting was excellent. Stellan Skarsgaad was wonderful as Dima - he managed, I thought, to make the character sympathetic without ever losing his menace. Damian Lewis was also very good. I don't especially care for Ewan MacGregor, but I thought he did well in this. I had last seen Khalid Abdalla, who played Luke, in the role of an Islamic terrorist in 'Spooks', and I think Susanne White made an excellent choice of having him play an MI-6 officer; while I know nothing about who staffs what in Vauxhall Cross, I would imagine it's much more multi-ethnic than it used to be. Lastly, the little cameo by John Le Carre himself was a nice touch.

As to how close to the reality the story line is ... I suspect much more so than many people might like to think!

As a Le Carre fan, it is fair to say that the film made a reasonable attempt of faithfully representing the book, although there were a few changes to the story. The problem with the film is that the book wasn't that brilliant to start off with and with the exception of Stellan Skarsgård (who played Dima)the other actors did not seem to have much belief in the characters they played. Saying that, it is possible for a film to be an improvement on the book and maybe misplaced deference to the author got in the way of the director and actors attempting to make the story more credible and interesting.

Perry was too 'nice' so when he played a 'knight in shining armour' on a couple of occasions, it was slightly confusing. Damian Lewis's performance (who played Hector of MI6) verged on the embarrassing as he portrayed him as a bumbling upper class twit which I am sure is not the character trait of MI6 operatives.

Overall, the film was watchable, but disappointing, especially after viewing the 'Night Manager' recently on television.

Sometimes you get into a situation without really doing anything. And then you have to ask yourself where to go from there. Something like this happens to Ewan McGregors character. Someone with a past, but also someone with morals. And someone who seems to be struggling with his life, so he may be welcoming whatever gets thrown at him.

This is based on a novel which I haven't read, so I can't compare those two. I can tell you that the movie is more than suspenseful enough and it seems very much rooted in reality (of course heightened at certain points of the story). There are many obstacles and you may see a lot of things coming before they happen, but the movie is played very well and is more than decent enough to enjoy