McGregor is our kind of traitor

‘From the director of Iron Man 3,’

it says on The Nice Guys (15) box – but if that puts you off, think again. Shane Black’s homage to the Los Angeles PI thriller (right) is a treat.

It’s 1977, which means cool cars, cooler disco beats and the coolest suits known to man. Not that everyone’s dressed to kill. Jackson Healy (Russell Crowe, inset far right) looks less the gladiator than a barrage balloon trapped in a leather jacket.

Jackson is hired muscle. Top of his beating-up list is Holland March (Ryan Gosling, inset, right), a PI who’s on the trail of the girl who’s hired Jackson. Then a porn star goes missing, and our two heroes join forces and…

If it’s sounding complicated, you ain’t heard nuttin’ yet. But the plot’s the last thing on your mind as you watch the film. What you’re following is the banter between Crowe and Gosling. One of the year’s best.

After the rather brilliant TV adaptation of John le Carré’s The

Night Manager – currently on RTÉ One – we get Susanna White’s Our Kind Of Traitor (15)

Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris play Perry and Gail Makepeace, a holidaying couple who bicker non-stop. One night, after another row, Perry meets Dima (Stellan Skarsgård), a Russian moneylaunderer. He tells Perry he has the lowdown on the link between the British establishment and the Rusky mafia. How would he like to smuggle this USB stick into London and blow the gaffe on the lot of ’em? All this is no more convincing than it sounds, but thankfully things are grounded by the performances of Jeremy Northam as a crooked MP and Damian Lewis as the spymaster on his trail. Between them, they almost make Our Kind Of Traitor our kind of movie. Meanwhile, The Night Manager’s Tom Hiddleston (left) turns up in I Saw The Light (15) a biopic of tortured southern-fried country singer Hank Williams. The script’s a bore – drinking and drugging and guitar-strumming do not a story make – but Tarm (the accent gets to you) Hitandstun (told you) is as on song as ever.