Ewan McGregor, Naomie Harris
“OUR KIND OF TRAITOR” My rating: B-
107 minutes | MPAA rating: R
With “Our Kind of Traitor” Hollywood may have gone to the John le Carré well one too many times.
It’s not that the feature from director Susanna White (“Nanny McPhee Returns” and a whole load of TV) is bad.
It just feels overly familiar. PBS, cable channels, Amazon and Netflix seem awash in Brit espionage fare, particularly titles with the le Carré pedigree. “Our Kind of Hero” tends to get lost in the mix.
Stellan Skarsgaard
Brit couple Perry (Ewan McGregor), a university lecturer, and his girlfriend Gail (Naomie Harris), an attorney, are vacationing in Marrakesh. Alas, the exotic setting is doing little to alleviate their relationship issues. Having sex seems like more of a chore than a pleasure.
Soloing at a local restaurant, Perry is befriended by Dima (Stellan Skarsgard), a garrulous Russian accompanied by a bunch of fellow Russkies whose sharp clothes do little to disguise their thuggish demeanors.
Dima drafts the reluctant Perry for a night of clubbing. The next day he schedules a tennis game with his new bud. And Dima introduces Perry and Gail to his family (wife, three or four kids).
Anyone who’s ever seen a spy thriller knows that the unsuspecting Englishman is going to get in way over his head.
Damian Lewis
Sure enough, Dima reveals that he is the money launderer for a Russian crime syndicate. Moreover, he’s pretty sure that the mob’s new boss has sinister plans for the accountant and his family. Dima knows too much. Those beefy buddies are not there for his protection…basically he’s being watched 24/7.
But he’s willing to share his knowledge with British intelligence in return for sanctuary for his brood.
Enter Hector (Damian Lewis) is one of Her Majesty’s spooks and a classic example of le Carre moral ambivalence. When he cannot convince his superiors to back Dima’s defection, Hector goes rogue, running the operation without authorization or resources.
Which means that Perry and Gail find themselves playing an ever more important (and dangerous) roles in the scheme.
The second half of “Our Kind of Traitor” is a pretty effective nail biter as Dima, his family and their British allies go on the run, hiding out in the Swiss alps from teams of assassins.
An intellectual like Perry should be the first one to go down but, in this sort of fantasy, he finds hidden strengths and resources with which to overcome the much better equipped bad guys. And all this excitement rekindles Perry and Gail’s sex drives.
Director White and screenwriter Hossein Amini (“Drive,” “47 Ronin”) establish a spine-tingling sense of growing dread (reminds of Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises”). The acting is fine, especially from Skarsgard, whose bombastic Dima is a bigger-than-life figure.
But mostly we’ve seen it before.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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