espionage

DVD/Stream of the Week: OUR KIND OF TRAITOR – Skarsgård steals this robust thriller

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Naomie Harris and Ewan McGregor in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.
Naomie Harris and Ewan McGregor in OUR KIND OF TRAITOR. Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Film Society.

Our Kind of Traitor is a robust globe-trotting thriller, enlivened by a lusty Stellan Skarsgård and played out in a series of stunning set pieces. A meek Everyman (Ewan McGregor) is a tag-along on his high-powered wife’s trip to Cairo. Nursing a drink after a tiff with said wife (the sleek Naomie Harris from 28 Days Later… and a couple of Bond films), he is inveigled into joining a crew of partying Russians and becomes entangled in an intrigue that puts entire families at stake – including his own.

It turns out that our protagonist has been randomly plucked from the humdrum by Dima (Skarsgård), the top money launderer for the Russian Mafia, who is trying to get British intelligence to help his family escape from his murderous colleagues. The story having been adapted from a John le Carré novel, the dour British spy (Damian Lewis from Homeland) on the case is being hindered at every turn by a thoroughly corrupt British law enforcement and intelligence bureaucracy, with the rot reaching up to Cabinet level.

The very best thing about Our Kind of Traitor is Stellan Skarsgård’s performance. Dima is loud, flamboyant and profoundly course. Skarsgård has filled his career with brooding roles, but here he gets to play the life of the party, and he is hilarious – and steals the movie.

Our Kind of Traitor also looks great as it takes us from Russia (shot in Finland) to Cairo (Morocco) to Switzerland to London to Paris. Director Susanna White is a veteran (21 directing credits on IMDb), but Our Kind of Traitor is her first big budget action movie. The success of the film revolves around a series of spectacular set pieces, and White pulls it off masterfully.

Our Kind of Traitor isn’t as good as the best of le Carré’s work (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, for instance), but it’s damn entertaining. I saw the final four plot twists coming, but by then I was hooked, so I still enjoyed the film. And, adapting to the post-Cold War world, le Carré may have become even more cynical.

I saw Our Kind of Traitor earlier this year at the 59th San Francisco International Film Festival at a screening with director Susanna White. If you’re looking for an intelligent summer thriller for adults, this is your movie.  Our Kind of Traitor is available to rent on DVD from Netflix (and coming soon to Redbox) and to stream from Amazon Instant, Vudu, YouTube and Google Play.

ZERO DAYS: cyberwar triumph? maybe not

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ZERO DAYS
ZERO DAYS

The important and absorbing documentary Zero Days traces the story of an incredibly successful cyber attack by two nation states upon another – and its implications. In Iran’s nuclear weapons development program, the centrifuges used to enrich uranium began destroying themselves in 2010. It turned out that these machines were instructed to self-destruct by a computer worm devised by American and Israeli intelligence.

No doubt – this was an amazing technological triumph.  Zero Days takes us through a thrilling whodunit non-geek audience.  We learn how a network that is completely disconnected from the Internet can still be infected.  And how cybersecurity experts track down viruses. It’s all accessible and fascinating.

But, strategically, was this really a cyberwarfare victory?  We learn just what parts of our lives can be attacked and frozen by computer attacks (Spoiler: pretty much everything).  And we learn that this attack has greenlighted cyberwarfare by other nations – including hostile and potentially hostile ones.  Zero Days makes a persuasive case that we need to have a public debate – as we have had on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons – on the use of this new kind of weaponry.

Director Alex Gibney is one our very, very best documentarians. He won an Oscar for Taxi to the Dark Side, and he made the superb Casino Jack: The United States of Money, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Elliot Spitzer, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God,  Going Clear: The Prison of Belief and Steve Jobs: Man in the Machine.

Gibney’s specialty is getting sources on-camera that have the most intimate knowledge of his topic.  In Zero Days, he pulls out a crew of cybersecurity experts, the top journalist covering cyberwarfare, leaders of both Israeli and American intelligence and even someone who can explain the Iranian perspective.  Most impressively, Gibney has found insiders from the NSA who actually worked on this cyber attack (and prepared others).

Zero Days opens tomorrow in theaters and will also be available to stream on Amazon, iTunes, Vusu, YouTube, Google Play, Xbox and various PPV platforms, including DirecTV.

THE SPYMASTERS — CIA IN THE CROSSHAIRS: Can we kill our way out of the War on Terror?

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Leon Panetta in THE SPYMASTERS
Leon Panetta in THE SPYMASTERS

In the thought-provoking documentary The Spymasters — CIA in the Crosshairs, we hear from all twelve directors of the CIA, from George H.W. Bush through current Director John Brennan.  They weigh in on the agency’s role in the War Against Terror, including harsh interrogation, drone warfare, the Kill List and “signature strikes”.  They disagree among themselves on torture, with Iraq War era directors George Tenet and Porter Goss, taking especially belligerent positions.  But there is a unified answer to this fundamental question about the War on Terror, “Can we kill our way out of it?”

The Spymasters — CIA in the Crosshairs showcases the decisions that a CIA Director must make, Leon Panetta poses one situation that he actually faced – do you take a rarely available missile shot at a terrorist who has just killed nine of your agents – when you know he is with his wife and kids? And several directors address the question, “What keeps you up at night?”

Besides the directors, we get to know a CIA operative with experience in Afghanistan, along with the agency’s chief of counter-terrorism. And we meet a most colorful character, the CIA’s former clandestine operations chief, Jose Rodriguez, who openly admits destroying the videos of CIA waterboarding.

The Spymasters echoes another talking head documentary The Gatekeepers, with the retired directors of the Shin Bet, Israel’s super-secret internal security force.  I recommend a double feature with these two companion films. The Gatekeepers is available to rent on DVD from Netflix and for streaming on Amazon Instant, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Flixster.

The Spymasters — CIA in the Crosshairs is currently playing on Showtime.