Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård bond as British amateur agent and mafia informant in John le Carré spy thriller
I wonder whether it's possible to make a bad John le Carré movie: Every one of the 15 films and miniseries based on his espionage thrillers is well worth watching.
I wonder whether it's possible to make a bad John le Carré movie: Every one of the 15 films and miniseries based on his espionage thrillers is well worth watching.
There are the masterpieces, including Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965) and the BBC's 1979 miniseries, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
But even the weakest films - the 1984 terrorism romance The Little Drummer Girl and the 1990 Cold War love story The Russia House - still outstrip most spy movies.
Director Susanna White's Our Kind of Traitor, a Russian mafia bromance, is a lesser entry, but there's much to recommend.
Based on the 2010 novel, it stars Ewan McGregor as Perry Makepeace, a professor who is on holiday in Marrakech with his power-lawyer wife, Gail (Naomie Harris), when he's approached by a Russian mobster (Stellan Skarsgård).
Skarsgård (the father of The Legend of Tarzan's Alexander Skarsgård) is all hand gestures and belly laughs as the gregarious, bigger-than-life bruiser Dina.
One of Russia's top money-launderers, Dina hands damning evidence about his bosses to Perry and begs him to deliver it posthaste to British intelligence. He's terrified, he tells Perry, that the new mob boss (Grigoriy Dobrygin) plans to wipe out his whole family.
McGregor is highly likable as a clueless and sheepish - if secretly sly - Hitchcockian everyman who knows he's out of his depth the second he gets sucked into the spy game.
Less palatable is Damian Lewis as Hector, an MI6 middle manager who handles Dina's case. Lewis, so wonderfully understated in Homeland, is too intense here. His character, prone to go off on extended monologues about ethics, seems to speak every third word in italics.
Le Carré's work is so effective, in part, because his stories usually feel so plausible and grounded.
Our Kind of Traitor strains credulity: The world it attempts to depict - international organized crime - is too large, too unmanageable and too easily caricatured. With its emphasis on action and exotic locales, it feels closer to Ian Fleming than Le Carré's more cerebral work.
Still, I'd take Le Carré over Fleming every time.
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MOVIE REVIEW
Our Kind of Traitor
ss1/2 (Out of four stars)
yDirected by Susanna White. With Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Damian Lewis. Distributed by Roadside Attractions.
yRunning time: 1 hour, 47 mins.
yParent's guide: R (violence, profanity throughout, some sexuality, nudity, brief drug use).
yPlaying at: Ritz Five.
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