John Le Carre's work has always been ripe for adaptation, however there's been very few that have worked well besides Alec Guinness' excellent BBC series in the '80s and Gary Oldman's update in 2011. That, however, hasn't stopped well-known and highly regarded directors from turning their hand to the material and giving it a decent go of it.
Our Kind Of Traitor is classic Le Carre. A bookish professor (McGregor) with a stupendously English name - Peregrine 'Perry' Makepeace - is on holidays with his wife (Naomie Harris) in Morocco when he meets a loud, brash Russian party animal called Dima, played loudly and effectively by Stellan Skarsgard. After he brings to a typically hedonistic party, Dima confides in him that he has vital information that needs to get to MI6 and that he needs asylum in England or he'll be killed. Sure enough, McGregor's character agrees and so sets the story in motion.
There's a huge variety of actors at work here, including Damian Lewis trying to ape the aforementioned Alec Guinness and, to a certain extent, Bernard Lee. McGregor, meanwhile, does a relatively good job working as the everyman in extraordinary circumstances whilst Harris has a certain stillness that's needed in all of the heightened emotions. Skarsgard, of course, is the central figure in all of this and gives freely of himself. There's more than a few times when his performance veers off into scenery chewing and definite sterotyping, but it's hard not to play a role like this and not get lost in it all. Jeremy Northam and Mark Gatiss, meanwhile, turn up for supporting roles and have some decent innings, but it's somewhat for naught.
The chief problem with Our Kind Of Traitor is that, well, it's largely forgettable. Susanna White's fantastic HBO miniseries, Generation Kill, proved herself as an effective director and being able to mix shocking violence with a sense of documentary to it. Likewise, with Nanny McPhee, there was an effective director imbuing the story with pace and flair. Likewise, her work on Masters Of Sex and Boardwalk Empire were all above average, but it's a huge shame to see it all fall by the wayside here. Even with veteran cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle helping giving the film a vivid sense of colour, it still doesn't work.
The reality is that another weak script by Hossein Amini has let everyone down. Amini, who wrote the perilously boring The Two Faces Of January and the reprehensible 47 Ronin, has made a career out of stifling dialogue and pace for the sake of atmosphere. Look at Drive, which he wrote. Had it not been for Nicholas Winding Refn's laser-sharp directing and strong visual sense, that film would have literally been two hours of Ryan Gosling saying nothing.
Aside from the decent performances by Skarsgard, McGregor et all, there's not a huge amount to love about Our Kind Of Traitor. You get the sense that Skarsgard signed on for the film on the reputation of its director and the chance to play around in Le Carre's world, but the sad fact is that this part of it isn't all that interesting.