Spooks: The Greater Good (2015)

Pretty Good

Fresh and Exciting

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

As most movies based on television series goes, MI-5 is probably better fitted for viewers of the series. I've never seen an episode of MI-5, but I've seen my fair share of spy-action-thrillers, and this one is about as middle of the road as you can get. There isn't anything special about this movie, but there's also nothing blatantly wrong with it either.Set a few years after the end of the series' run, MI-5 picks up as Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) is still the head of section D at MI-5. But when he realizes that someone inside of his team has aided a wanted international terrorist in his escape and he himself is suspected, he decides to take matters into his own hands and recruits one of his former guys, Kit Harrington into proving his innocence. Again, there's nothing really here that's all that original, but if you're looking for a fun little action film to take your mind away from normal life, MI-5 might be one for you.Harrington his very likable, as he always has been. His character here is pretty much Jon Snow in the modern world, but his talent is undeniable. This is especially clear when he's alongside costar, Peter Firth playing Harry, because that's not a particularly likable character. In fact, for most of the film I found myself rooting against him. Which brings up my major issue with the film, the endless plot twists and double crosses. There comes a point in the film when there's been so many different plot changes and reveals that the story becomes irrelevant. The film becomes to reliant on keeping you guessing the next turn, that it forgets to tell its own story.It's nice to see Kit Harrington get a starring role, and even see David Harewood in a feature film, but there's not a whole lot separating this film from anything else we have seen. Perhaps a bigger budget, more rounded villain, and a less convoluted script would make for a better viewing experience.6.2/10

I'm guessing from the spelling and turn of phrase that a lot of the reviews for this film are from Americans. A lot of the same reviews accuse it of being racist and clichéd with a "middle eastern terrorist bad guy" (he's actually Pakistani but why let geography get in the way?). I guess you need the same mind set as the makers of this film to realise the terrorists are the victims and the bad guys, as they usually were in the Spooks series, are the British. There's a particularly British mind set that distrusts authority figures and thinks they are usually corrupt or at least overly self interested and its in plain view throughout: Harry isn't searching for terrorists, he's looking for a traitor. The final show down isn't guns blazing as terrorists die in a hail of bullets, it's two people sat in a living room talking.It's the same mind set that birthed writers like John La Carre and stories like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It produces slow burning paranoid stories rather than big explosions and gun fights that feature in American cinema. Maybe that's the problem, it's a story style better suited to the small screen and the cinema should be left to the other film this year called MI5

The movie is about a rogue agent that has to save MI-5 for certain destruction by foreign powers. Sounds familiar? The film has multiple problems, starting with Harington's acting (sorry, John Snow) and ending with a way too predictable script. Every twist it had I saw coming for a mile away and there were things that happened that were quite clearly impossible in the timeframe of the movie.But what was probably the thing that stopped me most from enjoying this film was that it felt like a clone after American movies. Way before MI5 was taken over by the CIA, the British film industry seems to be taken over by Hollywood. Same cardboard characters, same complicated plots that somehow survive the battle unscathed, even if they are full of holes, same "human" behavior thing where the trained agent can't shoot and ask questions later, same grandiose villain and hero speeches and so on.Bottom line: as entertaining as an American blockbuster, with a slightly lower budget. I watched it, almost regretted it and soon I will forget all about it. Completely unmemorable.

When I was buying my ticket to "MI-5" (R, 1:44), the cashier asked me if I knew that this movie was not "Mission: Impossible 5". I said that I did, and we briefly spoke about the confusion caused by the title of the movie that I was about to see. As if on cue, as I walked away, I heard the woman who had just come to the box office request a ticket for "Mission: Impossible 5". She decided to choose another movie.Her confusion is understandable. Just a few months before the British spy thriller "MI-5" hit American theaters, "Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation" (sometimes referred to as "M:I-5") was playing widely in the U.S. Lest anyone think that "MI-5" is trying to ride the coat tails of "M:I-5", I should mention that the former is a cinematic continuation of the 2002-2011 British TV series of the same name. And, ironically enough, the jump that "MI-5" made to the big screen mirrors that of "Mission: Impossible" in which the first of the movies has the hero of the TV series going rogue. If all that is too confusing, maybe this will help: The British series is called "MI-5" in the U.S., but was titled "Spooks" in the U.K. (after the common nickname for spies around the world) and the film version is known overseas as "Spooks: The Greater Good". I hope that clears up any confusion, and I'll just talk about the British film from here on in."Spooks: The Greater Good" / "MI-5" takes its name from the legendary British Secret Service which is responsible for counter-terrorism and counter-espionage as it works to protect British governmental and economic interests. When Adem Qasim (Elyes Gabel), the CIA's most wanted terrorist, escapes British custody while being transported to American agents, Harry Pearce (Peter Firth), head of MI-5's counter-terrorism department (Section D), is blamed. With "MI-5" facing an existential crisis and trying to save face after Qasim's escape, the organization pressures Pearce to resign. Instead, he disappears.Former MI-5 agent, Will Holloway (Kit Harrington), who was only with the agency for a year, is brought in to help find Pearce. Holloway's father used to work with Pearce. MI-5 agents Geraldine Maltby (Jennifer Ehle) and Mace (Tim McInnerny) – with their boss, Francis Warrender (David Harewood) backing them up – tell Halloway that Pearce has more information about Halloway's father's death in the field than the young man had previously known. Halloway is reluctant because Pearce was the one responsible for Halloway's dismissal from MI-5 years before, but he really wants to get the whole story behind his father's death, so he sets out to find Pearce.Holloway uses some of his MI-5 skills to catch up to Pearce in Berlin, but gets much more than he bargained for. Before Pearce tells Holloway anything else about his father, Pearce enlists Holloway to help him in his self-assigned one-man mission to find a traitor within MI-5. Holloway doesn't like or trust Pearce, especially when he finds out Pearce has been in contact with Qasim, but his encounters with another agent (Tuppence Middleton) lead Holloway to believe that Pearce is right about the traitor within their organization. The rest of the film involves a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse in which Pearce works Qasim to discover the traitor's identity and Holloway works desperately to prevent a terrorist attack on London."MI-5" / "Spooks: The Greater Good" effectively mixes influences from the "Mission: Impossible" movies and TV shows like "Homeland" and "24", but isn't quite as good. Some of the film's plot points feel contrived, but the main story is interesting and keeps the audience guessing. The script contains great lines ("You can do good or you can do well. Sooner or later they make you choose.") as it delves into the complicated world of counter-terrorism in the 21st century and explores the difficult decisions we must make to survive in that world. Gabel isn't quite menacing enough as the villain, but Firth brings forward his character from the TV show wonderfully, while Harrington is great in this modern "Game of Thrones". It's too bad that woman chose not to see "MI-5". She missed a very entertaining movie. "B+"