Movie Review—Our Kind of Traitor

Our Kind of Traitor

by Peter J. O'Connell  

Our Kind of Traitor. Released (USA): July 2016. Runtime: 108 mins. MPAA Rating: R for violence throughout, some sexuality, nudity and brief drug use. 

For over 50 years, British author John Le Carre has been bringing forth bleakly brilliant novels dealing with espionage, terrorism, and international crime and politics. Many of his works have been made into films, some for theatres, some for television. The latest for theatres is Our Kind of Traitor, directed by Susanna White.

The movie's protagonists are introduced in a sequence set in Morocco that might be a hommage to Alfred Hitchcock's classic The Man Who Knew Too Much. A young couple on vacation there becomes caught up in a web of dangerous events that they struggle to understand. The couple consists of Perry (Ewan McGregor), an Oxford poetics instructor, and Gail (Naomie Harris), a successful barrister. The vacation is partially to deal with some stresses and strains in their relationship.

In Marrakech the couple become acquainted with Dima (Stellan Skarsgard) and his family. Dima, a Russian oligarch, is a charismatic bear of a man who throws spectacular parties to which he invites the Brits. At one of them, he confides to Perry that he is the “world's number one money launderer” but is being forced by his criminal brotherhood to turn over his money-laundering operations to them soon in Bern, Switzerland. Dima fears that once that happens, he and his family will be killed. To avoid that fate, he seeks to give a “memory stick” to British intelligence in return for their protection. The memory stick contains information on those in Britain, including important government officials and businessmen, involved in his laundering.

Dima says that because he is being watched, the only way to get the memory stick to Britain is to have Perry take it and deliver it to British intelligence. Perry agrees to do that, partially because he is under Dima's spell, partially because he feels the need for some excitement in his life, and partially because it will give a boost to his sense of manhood, which has become somewhat wilted by the greater success if Gail. 

Upon returning to London, Perry turns the memory stick over to British intelligence, which places Hector (Damian Lewis) and Like (Khalid Abdalia) in charge of a secret semi-official investigation. The intelligence establishment is reluctant to believe that a certain high-level decision maker (Jeremy Northam) implicated by the stick is actually guilty. 

The action then shifts to Paris for the first meeting of British intelligence with Dima. Dima has insisted that Perry and Gail be present for this meeting. As tension mounts, the action shifts to Bern, where Dima signs over his “assets” to the new criminal leadership and then is taken by British intelligence to a supposed safe haven in the Alps. There in a dark night on cold and isolated heights, the events that began in the heat and colors of Morocco come to an explosive climax as various characters undergo tests of love and loyalty. 

Our Kind of Traitor addresses an important issue, the influence in the West of the criminal/capitalist oligarchs of post-Soviet Russia. Unfortunately, the “willing suspension of disbelief” necessary to enjoy fiction is hard to achieve with this story. Dima, despite Stellan Skarsgard's skillful portrayal, is just too gentle a “bear” to accept as the “world's number one money launderer.” And Perry is just too gullible a character for an audience to believe in, even if he is an Oxford instructor of poetics. Naomie Harris' performance as Gail is solid, though she doesn't have much to do, and Damian Lewis is interestingly quirky as Hector. As for director White's work, she could have done much more with the material supplied her by Le Carre's novel, despite some of the flaws in it.