Spooks: The Greater Good

This will be the purest review of a film you’ll read in some time. The usual blanket media exposure of a film's release can be sometimes sullied - you who is in it, what it’s about, what the word on it is, etc. But no one knew about Spooks. Notice about the press screening arrived late yesterday so there was no chance of prep. I've never seen a second of the TV series so have nothing to compare it to (and so can’t make the easy judgement by calling it TV) and am unaware if it's a truncated version of the series or a standalone feature length episode.

This lack of background information does allow me to assess the most important aspect of Spooks: what is it like as a movie? In short, yes. It's not bad at all.

Qasim (Elyes Gabel) is a terrorist in the process of being handed over to the CIA by MI5 when a daring escape plot springs him from custody. Harry Pearce (Peter Firth) is the man overseeing the bungled operation and, as punishment, he's decommissioned almost immediately. He takes it badly, goes rogue, and ousted agent Will Holloway (Games Of Thrones' Kit Harrington) is the man charged with bringing Pearce in. However, Pearce is convinced the handover operation was spoiled because someone high up in MI5 leaked the information and he needs Holloway to help him tease Qasim out into the open to find out who the traitor is.

With its mixture of energetic chase sequences and twists teased out through sharp dialogue, Spooks: The Greater Good is lodged somewhere between James Bond and George Smiley. When it isn't trying to inject needless action scenes that have no follow through - Holloway’s introductory scene sees him race through a Moscow restaurant and crash through its window; later he climbs an apartment block and breaks into a flat to no surprise of the occupant - Spooks comes up good with sometime series director Bharat Nalluri flitting about London in similar fashion to Paul Greengrass’s globe-trekking in Bourne.

It does little to disguise who the traitor is - it’s one of two people - and can be a victim of its limited budget but Spooks is a fine thriller in its own right.