Left out in the cold
Spy drama merely can’t maintain tension over two-hour length
It’s probably not the best sign when you leave a spy thriller thinking, “Man, that Stellan Skarsgård makes a great Russian!” But the Swedish actor nails the part of Dima, a swaggering, brusque, casually profane, hardpartying Russian mafioso with a head for figures, who wants to get out of the money-laundering business while he still has a head on his portly figure.
He’s got a soft side too, mind you. Dima’s first priority is the safety of his wife and children. And he tells his new best friend, Perry Makepeace, about the time when he was a boy and killed a man who was abusing his mother. “It was mother,” he explains. “You get sentimental.”
Perry is played by Ewan McGregor in full-on meek mode. On vacation in Morocco with his wife, Gail (Naomie Harris), Perry glances across a restaurant to where Dima is having noisy fun with some friends. The Russian responds by buying him a drink, then all but strong-arming him into a night out on the town.
Before they part, however, Dima reveals his real agenda — he wants the poetry professor to deliver a memory stick to the British authorities on his return to London. He says he can trust no one in his circle, and so Perry agrees. But is he being a pal or a patsy?
Our Kind of Traitor, based on the 2010 novel by John le Carré, lets us (and Perry and Gail) wonder about that for a long time. What is more certain is that a British agent (Damian Lewis) with a grudge against his former boss (Jeremy Northam) hopes to use the information from Dima to settle some old scores and chalk up some new ones. Dima, fearing a doublecross (or perhaps planning one?) insists Perry broker his meeting with the Brits.
The resulting tale skips quickly through several European locales, including a spa in the Swiss Alps and the ugliest housing estate in all of Paris. Hossein Amini (Drive) adapts the action concisely. It’s always nice to see a scene in which one succinct line of dialogue provides an encyclopedic insight into a couple’s backstory.
Yet there’s not enough going on here to fill the film’s two hours.
Worse, McGregor ends up with precious little to do. Dima keeps calling Perry “a man with honour,” and Perry is clearly flattered to hear it, but it’s difficult to know how much of his action is driven by ego, how much by innate goodness. This is a case where the spies need to let the audience come in from the cold.