Our Kind of Traitor

Good thriller from the master, John Le Carre, with some very interesting visuals by the director, Susanna White.

The story concerns a young couple (Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris) who meet a Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgard). It turns out that Dima wants something delivered to British intelligence, which the naive McGregor does. Dima is involved with the Russian mafia and he has information that will bring down corrupt politicians in London. When the couple delivers the flash drive to Hector (Damien Lewis) in British Intelligence, they find themselves embroiled in a dangerous situation.

Some real revelations here for me anyway - first of all, I've never heard Damien Lewis speak with his native British accent; second, I've never before considered Stellan Skarsgard as having any sex appeal. His portrayal of the loud, friendly, charismatic Dima is fantastic. With people like Lewis and Skarsgard in the cast, you know the acting will be top level, and it is. McGregor and Harris hold their own, as good people who can't walk away from Dima and his family.

Very good.

I enjoy John Le Carre, but none of the adaptations of his books have really blown me away. I am happy to say that I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I came into this movie without many expectations, as I have not read the book and I hadn't heard anything about the movie.

Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård star as a British professor and a Russian mobster respectively, and both give great performances, especially Skarsgård, who plays a man who you know is a bad person, but you can't help but like. Naomie Harris and Damian Lewis also feature, and while both are good in their roles, I felt like Harris, who plays McGregor's wife, wasn't given much to do.

I really enjoyed the cinematography, and you could tell that Anthony Dod Mantle worked hard to make sure every shot was interesting even when what was going on in the shot was pretty basic.

The story is nothing you haven't seen before, but I found myself really captured by the great acting and interesting dialogue.

B+

Very good entertainment. Recommend it for a Friday evening. Good actors, good trama.

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

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 lies to his crew (and everyone else) about having permission to proceed and goes forward with his unauthorized operation – which involves civilians, no less. Hector establishes contact with Dima, but Dima refuses to deal with anyone but Perry. Thus, Perry and Gail head to Paris where they "accidentally" run into Dima, who is on his way to Switzerland to sign over to his new bosses the accounts that he manages. Then, as things get more dangerous, Perry and Gail get involved more and more deeply.

"Our Kind of Traitor" is a satisfying, but unremarkable thriller. Some of the plot points seem highly implausible and others feel underwritten. The story is well-constructed, but the acting (except for Skarsgård's) is listless and the entire film suffers from a lack of tension. Cornwell / le Carré novels often suffer somewhat in the process of adapting them to the big screen, but this one is still worth a look. "B"