Film No. 51 (2016) August 16th. 6.15 PM LUNA Paradiso, Northbridge.
"Help? I'm a teacher, what can I do?" (Perry, Ewan Mcgregor) responds to Dima's request for help; help of a most life threatening kind).
The classy B Grade thriller is a joyful cinema experience. This bedrock of entertaining cinema has endured through the ages, especially post World War II when so many stories of espionage and betrayal surfaced. Well, Our Kind of Traitor maintains that rich tradition of exaggerated plot lines depicting ordinary people placed in extraordinary situations.
The casting is all important when it comes to partially predictable plot lines. Stellan Skarsgard is the gem here. He plays Dima a Russian Mafia boss and part-time British informer who will be killed along with his family under new Mafia boss "The Prince" if he doesn't act in haste. Enter Perry (Ewan McGregor) and Gail (Naomie Harris), a married couple, on holiday. They are about to become Dima's unsuspecting saviours.
Bringing the everyday lives of Perry and Gail into Dima's world needs to be believable. le Carre's writing is for the page so director Susanna White does a meticulous job using Dima's family as the conduit to legitimately keeping us on the edge of our seats via the screen. Then there is Hector (Damian Lewis) the compassionate (if there is such a thing) MI6 connection to bringing Dima in from "the cold".
I'm not inclined to tell the story of Our Kind of Traitor. To do that is to spoil a storyline laced with intrigue. The film is entertaining and does the novel proud. Transferring everyday people into extra-ordinary situations, le Carre's style on the page is easily overlooked if not effective. Depicting an exaggerated storyline to screen is more easily criticised if not done well. Our Kind of Traitor is effectively entertaining. 8GUMS.
The casting is all important when it comes to partially predictable plot lines. Stellan Skarsgard is the gem here. He plays Dima a Russian Mafia boss and part-time British informer who will be killed along with his family under new Mafia boss "The Prince" if he doesn't act in haste. Enter Perry (Ewan McGregor) and Gail (Naomie Harris), a married couple, on holiday. They are about to become Dima's unsuspecting saviours.
Bringing the everyday lives of Perry and Gail into Dima's world needs to be believable. le Carre's writing is for the page so director Susanna White does a meticulous job using Dima's family as the conduit to legitimately keeping us on the edge of our seats via the screen. Then there is Hector (Damian Lewis) the compassionate (if there is such a thing) MI6 connection to bringing Dima in from "the cold".
I'm not inclined to tell the story of Our Kind of Traitor. To do that is to spoil a storyline laced with intrigue. The film is entertaining and does the novel proud. Transferring everyday people into extra-ordinary situations, le Carre's style on the page is easily overlooked if not effective. Depicting an exaggerated storyline to screen is more easily criticised if not done well. Our Kind of Traitor is effectively entertaining. 8GUMS.
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