Our Kind of Traitor (2016)
A young Oxford academic and his attorney girlfriend holiday in Morocco. They bump into a Russian millionaire who owns a peninsula and a diamond watch. He wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the lovers on a tortuous journey to the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's intelligence establishment, to Paris and the Alps.
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hyped garbage
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.
The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.
Our Kind of Traitor is a solid but dull film with a lot of foreign location shooting but it is also rather predictable.I understand that some of the people who worked on the BBC television series The Night Manager also worked in this film. Whereas the long form television series managed to maintain its tension and had several well staged set pieces throughout its running length. This was lackluster.Perry (Ewan McGregor) a lecturer and his wife Gail (Naomie Harris) a lawyer are on holiday in Marrakesh. Perry is invited to party with Dima (Stellan Skarsgård) a brash Russian who is really a financier for a Russian mobster.Dima asks for Perry's help to save his family by becoming a MI6 informant as he has information on British financiers and politicians who have laundered money for the Russian underworld. Perry needs to contact a sympathetic MI6 agent.It is well acted especially by Skarsgård but it all feels rather restraint.
Had the DVD, but never intended to watch this movie because of some of the mob reviews/parental remarks here. Gave it a chance anyways late one night out of desperation.Even the beginning scenes drew me in. What is this all about? As more of the mafia elements started to unravel, I knew then that I was hooked. The acting was not bad. The cinematography (as stated by another reviewer) was interesting. As the story progressed, I noticed that I kept wanting to see more of the drama unfold. This was definitely a good break from the cliché action & remakes that's common nowadays. Many scenes here can make you angry, but they seem necessary for the background of the story. There were times you wanted Obi Wan Kenobi to pull out a light saber, but, this story teaches, that even the average human being, can sometimes do questionable actions.
SPOILERS ALERT - inevitably, as this film is largely about redemption, so it is necessary to give away certain details in order to explain why. Redemption for Ewan McGregor's university professor, who has thrown his marriage into crisis through an 'indiscretion' with a student, and he is also struggling to cope with his male ego in a relationship where his wife is much more professionally successful, in her work as a barrister. Redemption for the mafia money man, who is seeking to protect his family from treachery by delivering the goods on a huge corruption scheme involving the Russian mafia and British politicians. This extrovert figure (can't imagine Ralph Fiennes carrying this one off) also recognises the fundamental decency of McGregor's character and saves his life by following a hunch (McGregor had also twice saved his). And redemption for the MI6 officer who fell afoul of his superiors because he was unable to come up with evidence to convict influential figures. How all these stories play themselves out is well worth watching.
What lengths would you go to in order to save your family?Would you deliver a memory stick to the MI6 if a stranger asked you to?Our Kind of Traitor poses these and more questions in the adaptation of a John LeCarre novel. Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgard, and Damian Lewis are the three major leads.The movie was enjoyable if a little unbelievable at times.