Our Kind Of Traitor

This review may contain spoilers!

A rather boring spy/thriller film let down by it's extremely uneventful plot. I would give Our Kind Of Traitor a 4.5/10.

This film gets off to a really good start, laying down the groundwork to make you feel quite tense and to sense that there's this real danger existing on the fringes of what is otherwise quite a mundane world. The cinematography in this film is quite nice, it feels very experimental which worked out well for this film because you get scenes shot at some very creative or interesting angles.

Emily Beacock and Rosanna Beacock, who played Irina and Katya respectively, were some incredible child actor performances within this film; these two sisters were quite charming roles but had the blunt edge that we came to attribute with the Russian characters. Damian Lewis, who played Hector, was perfect as the secret services character in this film; he had a hard exterior which concealed a character who was very moral and active in seeking justice.

However the best performance came from Stellan Skarsgard, who played Dima. Skarsgard's role was quite easy to like; he had a lot of presence and seemed boisterous and jolly. Yet you could also see the harder qualities to this role, his intense rage at the people coming after his family and the worn down quality to his character after years of living in the criminal world. Skarsgard creates a role we come to know as a person who places their family before anyone else, including himself as we ultimately see.

The problem with the plot of the film was that it never really raised the stakes enough, the conflict doesn't change throughout the film and it all just results in this big long static film. It drags it's feet and honestly what would've served the film would have been some of the repetitive scenes cut out and the characters of Perry and Gail to be made more engaging. The fact that Dima wants his family to be safe is interesting, the fact Hector wants to bring down Longrigg is interesting but you can't make a film last by having these motivations repeated over and over for the better of an hour and a half of the film. The editing also didn't help this laborious film much, several scenes the cutting came at awkward moments and then in others the choice to put in certain shots seems rather questionable. The score for this film seemed to heighten the experience...at first; sadly as the film carries on the main theme of the film plays so many times that it feels like this film has no tone and that you're stuck in this endless loop.

Grigoriy Dobrygin, who played The Prince, makes for an extremely weak antagonist to this film; his tendency to repeat the same monologue is a villainous trait that wears a bit thin. Velibor Topic, who played Emilio Del Oro, was just a rather insignificant minor antagonist; he filled the background but his few lines and mostly physical performance marked him as a forgettable role. Ewan McGregor, who played Perry, hasn't landed a very remarkable role in a while now; in this particular film he certainly is a protagonist who falls flat and seems a bit ineffectual. Naomie Harris, who played Gail, didn't do well in the James Bond spy films and she's not doing so well in this particular spy feature either; Harris' problem is that she has no chemistry with McGregor and has little to do in this film other than stand in scenes with him. Alec Utgoff, who played Niki, was little more than a glorified henchman in this film; he certainly got given far too much screen time. Jana Perez, who played Maria, was an extremely pointless role; the subplot that there might be a thing between her and McGregor was just unnecessary screen time in the end. Emanuel Brook and Matthew Brook, who played Alexei and Viktor respectively, were everything that the Beacock sisters were not; they had no screen presence and their performances were often quite stiff. Saskia Reeves, who played Tamara, was quite a poorly done role; her lack of lines meant that she seemed a rather cold character but her outburst at the end of the film didn't match this at all resulting in a role that was all over the place. Alicia von Rittberg, who played Natasha, is a role that is forgotten about for almost the entire film until the plot calls for her; when von Rittberg's character actually does have a part to play you feel like a lot of what she's talking about comes out of nowhere and ultimately really does not add anything to the film. Khalid Abdalla, who played Luke, was a rather insignificant backing role to Lewis' character in this film; Abdalla never really did much as a role and had very little screen presence. Mark Gatiss, who played Billy Matlock, was a vastly underused character in this film; Gatiss was put in little more than a toneless bit role. Jeremy Northam, who played Aubrey Longrigg, is an actor I'm starting to recognise as a weak link in these British films; Northam's British antagonist proves that there is worse than his Russian counterparts when it comes to performance.