OUR KIND OF TRAITOR – Review

John le Carré incorporates many of the same ingredients in each of his literary recipes: espionage, intrigue, and corruption. How he uses these ingredients and a few others sprinkled in is what makes each of his dishes satisfying. OUR KIND OF TRAITOR might be the author’s least complicated recipe. There are fewer players and even fewer entanglements than some of his recent film adaptations, such as A MOST WANTED MAN and the acclaimed TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY. As a result, OUR KIND OF TRAITOR might be the most easily digestible for those looking for a more straight-forward approach to his world of international crime.

Ewan McGregor stars as a poetry teacher who dips his pen into the wrong inkwell. After a vacation in Morocco with his wife turns sour (Naomie Harris), the “professor” ends up going out on the town with a man he meets one night at a restaurant, Dima (Stellan Skarsgård). The two soon develop an odd friendship of sorts, which leads to Dima asking the “professor” to deliver a jump drive filled with information about the Russian mob to British authorities. Dima wants out of the mob and needs the help of the young couple to do so. A member of MI6, Hector (Damian Lewis), meets with the couple and agrees to help, but things get more complicated with Russian gangsters and the British intelligence both keeping a close eye on Dima to see what he will do next.

Crooked criminals and corrupt government officials abound yet again. It’s always a dynamic chess match with le Carré’s work, where one player moves and the audience is already anticipating the countermove from the other side. However, in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR, all the pieces only move forward instead of diagonally or in other maneuvers. I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily boring, but it becomes a bit more predictable than you might expect as one botched exchange of information leads to another.

Stellan Skarsgård provides some minor fireworks as a rambunctious loose cannon working as a money launderer for the Russian government. He nails both the wild side and the tender side with which he shows towards his family. Why McGregor’s modest, bookish character goes along with Skarsgård’s charade is a little lost on me, but it sets up an occasionally humorous fish out of water story of two men from two very different worlds. What also lights up the screen is Anthony Dod Mantle’s cinematography. It’s slickly photographed, infusing a high amount of blue and gold saturation throughout. The style stands in stark contrast to what we typically associate with films centered around Russian mobsters.

This political melodrama frequently masks as a spy thriller by incorporating secret meetings, exotic locales (Morocco, Paris, and the French Alps), and a brief shootout, but as is the case with much of le Carré’s work, the focus is less on James Bond theatrics and more on the real world approach to espionage. Le Carré relishes in showing the moral ambiguity of those fighting on the right and wrong side of a situation. No one’s hands are clean and yet everyone is also a victim. A criminal can love his family more than anything in the world, and a loyal government official can hate his country for the bureaucratic BS he must deal with. It’s a tug of war where no one wins, much like the real life events that are shaping Europe at this very moment. OUR KIND OF TRAITOR doesn’t come with gadgets and super villains, but it does convey the hard reality of not finding an easy solution when dealing with misconduct on both sides. However, there’s a sprinkling of a new ingredient as well – a humanist element to the story that seems slightly contrary to le Carré’s typically cynical tone. Director Susanna White has chosen to focus her attention more on telling a story of two men seeking solace and redemption, adrift in a world of complications. One lost in love, and one lost in war; both hoping to make amends for their sins.

Overall rating: 3 out of 5

OUR KIND OF TRAITOR is now playing in theaters everywhere