Twenty-five years ago, at a time when otherwise intelligent commentators predicted “the end of history,” many wondered if John Le Carré had outlived his day. With no Cold War to chill his readers, would inspiration fail for the master of morally ambiguous spy novels? Clearly, however, history has continued and lately, even the Cold War has made a comeback. In the latest film adaptation of Le Carré, Our Kind of Traitor, the Russians have returned as villains while British intelligence continues to play games with human lives.
Ewan McGregor stars as Perry, a London University poetry professor whose marriage to a prominent barrister, Gail (Naomie Harris), is dissolving into uncomfortable silence. Vacationing in Marrakesh, Gail stalks off to their hotel room, leaving Perry alone at the restaurant. He is invited to join the boisterous party across the room by a hearty, backslapping Russian, Dima (Stellan Skarsgård). Clad in black leather despite the climate, Dima lures the reluctant Perry into flamboyant nightclubs and parties where beautiful women with exotic accents offer cocaine and conversation, camels wonder through Moorish arches and fireworks fill the sky. After showing Perry a good time, Dima asks for a favor: deliver a memory stick to MI6 upon returning to London. It’s life or death business.
Turns out Dima is controller for the Russian mob and has reason to believe he will be murdered by the new heir to the syndicate, a callow youngster without a particle of his father’s sense of honor. Dima has incriminating information about a roster of prominent Brits with Russian mob ties and wants to trade his secrets for asylum for himself and his family.
The plot has weak links, especially Dima’s random choice of Perry as his confidant. Likewise, the lengths to which Perry and Gail throw themselves into harm’s way on Dima’s behalf are probably better explained in the novel than on screen. However, the acting is sufficiently on point, with nothing over dramatized, and the story becomes almost emotionally believable.
British director Susanna White wraps the plot in visual intrigue, enclosing the characters in a claustrophobic underworld where daylight seldom penetrates, neon washes across the windshields on nocturnal streets, paranoia becomes pervasive and Bern’s Einstein Museum, site of a key event, becomes a not-fun house of mirrors. Everyone has an agenda, including the MI6 operative who is running a rogue operation to gain Dima’s secrets out of vengeance against a British politician. Dima’s survival seems secondary. Skarsgård is the film’s force of nature, investing his character with a full life as a funny, dangerous man who maintains a code in the midst of mayhem.
Our Kind of Traitor
Ewan McGregor
Stellan Skarsgård
Directed by Susanna White
Rated R
