One couple’s foreign vacation is never the same when they come across a mysterious man with a deadly secret. In “Our Kind of Traitor”, When Perry (Ewan McGregor) and his girlfriend, Gail (Naomie Harris), cross paths with the charismatic Dima (Stellan Sarsgard) on their Moroccan holiday, the forceful Russian is quick to challenge Peter to a friendly game of tennis. But this diversion of a contest is not all it seems: Dima is a long-time servant of the Russian mafia, whose new boss, ‘The Prince’ (Grigoriy Dobrygin), wants him and his family dead. His only hope is to ask the unsuspecting Peter to broker him sanctuary with the British intelligence services, in return for exposing a vein of corruption that runs right to the heart of the City of London. Soon they find themselves on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps via a ruthless and determined MI6 agent (Damien Lewis) assisting them. What began as a friendly exhibition of tennis, turns into a fight for the very survival of this couple. “Our Kind of Traitor” is directed by Susanna White, and is rated R for violence, language throughout, some sexuality, nudity and brief drug use.
“Our Kind of Traitor” feels like a British spy thriller, complete with more long-winded diatribes in favor of Americanized action and violence. While I normally poke fun at anything that has a desperate stench of country pride, I will instead favor it over Susanna White’s film, because this one is a mess. What this film is greatly missing in 102 minutes of screen time is the lack of intrigue or death-defying stunt work that really makes you feel a sense of desperation for our characters. With only two fight scenes (Barely) and no action sequences what so ever, this movie feels like an exercise in staying awake. Because of this, the audience will likely check out of this movie before things start to turn even worse by the second act. This movie honestly bored me because it feels like it gets so much wrong from a trailer that at least slightly showed promise. The first thirty minutes are solid enough because it focuses on the crumbling relationship between McGregor and Harris, as well as grant us a likeable enough exchange with the flamboyant Sarsgaard. The script commits too many errors though, and the biggest ones of all are perhaps two-fold: 1. Forgetting about our main characters (McGregor and Harris) once they’ve initially established their backstories, and 2. playing it more for the politics of such a story, instead of creating an air of tension that gives this an independent psychological chase movie. The latter perhaps being the toughest aspect to grasp of this movie.
The film lacks any kind of paranoia or backstabbing nature within the film, to give audiences a sense that nobody can be trusted. There’s rarely ever that moment where we feel great trouble for our characters, because the movie would much rather focus on interrogation scenes, and this one certainly had one too many. For the most part, the villains might as well not even exist except to be a league of shadows that command all of the puppet strings. I say this because the Russian mafia in this movie are about as one-dimensional as the phrase “Cookie-cutter” can get. Reading my synopsis up top, you would think that The Prince has a huge role in this movie, but you would be wrong. He serves as nothing more than table dressing for the behind-the-scenes corruption that has gone on within this country. The film plays everything too monotonously, and because of it we get an ending that comes and goes without even a shred of hope for our characters or a care for the finished direction. The movie tries to amaze us with a last second ditch effort to give us the happy ending, but frankly it’s something that should’ve happened forty minutes into the film, so by the time it does happen an hour later, I couldn’t care less.
Some of the things I did enjoy about the movie was the production values for White’s film. While she isn’t someone who I would cast at the top of my list for a spy thriller, she does possess the talent of beautiful looking on-screen visuals that really captivate visually and faithfully the kind of idea in style that you get from the various countries in the film. There’s a gorgeous aura of yellow illumination for a lot of the club and restaurant scenes, and the foreign style of cinematography for shooting really soaks in a richly textured layer of European touch.
On the subject of performances, as I mentioned before, there isn’t much to grade on our two main protagonists. I think the film could’ve used more emphasis on their past troubles, considering they both weave in and out of the screenplay like expendable supporting cast. With a half hour left, the movie remembers them, and for a moment we get to see great on-screen chemistry within their pairing. None of what I mentioned is McGregor or Harris’s fault. They can only do with what they are presented, and this mumbled delivery on human relations really makes them feel foreign to any moviegoer. Damien Lewis is brilliant during a second act when the movie needs leadership. Because of the drop-off of our main characters, we seek guidance from someone who can keep our eyes glued to the screen, and the magnetism of Lewis’s soft-but-stern approach makes him a sure-fire candidate for the job. There’s great intelligence to the way Lewis commands his character. He serves as the brains of this operation, essentially acting as one man versus an entire mafia. Of course the wild card in all of this is Sarsgaard. The screenplay really enjoys this character, and Stellan’s transformation into a Russian crime lord is quite an enjoyable one. His accent is a little off, but with the charisma of a real character actor like Sarsgaard, it makes the bad that much more appealing. His opening scenes certainly bring an air of believability to our viewing experience, as we too find ourselves falling for the very magic of such a presentation. Stellan and Lewis are the very best aspects of this movie, and their interrogation interviews are perhaps the only thing that will keep you holding on.
Overall, “Our Kind of Traitor” doesn’t quite reach far enough for the kind of emotional investment required to get past some long lapses in excitement. It’s a muddled script that is dragged even lower by a premise that doesn’t explore the real chilling nature of such a predicament. As a movie that is deemed a “thriller” without any actual thrills, this “Traitor” is best to serve its own literary book instead of abandoning it for a bigger silver screen.
4/10