Movie Review: 'Our Kind Of Traitor'
By Bill Wine
KYW Newsradio 1060
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Our Kind of Traitor centers on an ordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.
Unfortunately, the film itself is far more ordinary than extraordinary: would that this thriller were actually thrilling.
It emerges from a 2010 novel of the same name by John le Carre, as have a number of big- and small-screen espionage thrillers brimming with world-weary cynicism -- including The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Tailor of Panama, Smiley's People, The Russia House, The Constant Gardener, The Little Drummer Girl, and The Night Manager.
Ewan McGregor headlines as poetry professor Perry Makepeace, on holiday in Marrakech with his wife, a lawyer played by Naomie Harris.
They're trying to repair their stalled relationship.
Then Perry is approached by a loud-mouthed Russian mobster named Dima – played by Swedish actor Stellan Skarsgard, whose son is starring as Tarzan in an adjacent theater – who claims to be a money launderer for the Russian mob and plans to defect if he can do so safely.
But can Dima be trusted?
He appeals to Perry's compassion by telling him that he, his wife, and his kids are in mortal danger, so Perry agrees to help him out by acting as a go-between and passing along to British intelligence the evidence of naming-names wrongdoing – of Russian involvement with British politicians, including the corrupt member of Parliament played by Jeremy Northam.
From this moment on, everyman Perry is in well over his head and is vulnerable in a way that he has never experienced before.
The driven MI6 operative on the case is one Hector, played by Damian Lewis, who immediately puts pressure on Perry to get in harm's way by getting even deeper immersed in this imbroglio and help MI6 to bust the case wide open.
But, come to think of it, can Hector be trusted?
There's nothing wrong with director Susanna White's (Nanny McPhee Returns) handling of the narrative or direction of her actors. But there's not much right with it either. And even though the film is unnecessarily humorless, there is a curious and decided lack of tension or suspense: the movie stays on the simmer setting from beginning to end.
The contrast between the personality and behavior of understated, naive McGregor and overstated, worldly Skarsgard registers, but Harris is terribly underused by Hossein Amini's adapted screenplay, especially given that she's described as a high-powered attorney.
And as for the marital relationship that figures so prominently early on, it pretty much remains unexplored.
If there's a movie that comes to mind in terms of narrative parallels, it's Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much, which the Master of Suspense actually made two versions of. But let's just politely say that it does Our Kind of Traitor no favors by bringing Hitchcock's flicks into the conversation.
Let's just leave it at the need for international intrigue to be more intriguing.
So we'll defect to 2 stars out of 4 for a spy flick that never quite comes in from the cold. If Our Kind of Traitor were more lively or shivery – or both -- it might be our kind of movie. Alas.