Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
A young Oxford academic and his attorney girlfriend holiday in Morocco. They bump into a Russian millionaire who owns a peninsula and a diamond watch. He wants a game of tennis. What else he wants propels the lovers on a tortuous journey to the City of London and its unholy alliance with Britain's intelligence establishment, to Paris and the Alps.
Our Kind of Traitor is a competent le Carré adaptation with solid performances from Ewan McGregor and Stellan Skarsgård, but it never quite rises above its material. The plot is serviceable spy-thriller fare that hits familiar beats of the reluctant civilian entangled in espionage, though le Carré's cynical institutional critique gives it some texture. Cinematography is professional and makes good use of its European locations without being particularly distinctive. The ending is muted and somewhat unsatisfying — deliberately downbeat in le Carré fashion but lacking the resonance of the best adaptations. Novelty suffers as this treads well-worn le Carré territory of moral compromise and institutional rot, and it doesn't bring enough fresh vision to distinguish itself from other adaptations of his work.