espionage movies

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.

BRIDGE OF SPIES: pretty good spy story with a great Mark Rylance

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Tom Hanks in BRIDGE OF SPIES
Tom Hanks in BRIDGE OF SPIES

In Steven Spielberg’s true-to-life espionage thriller Bridge of Spies, Tom Hanks plays James B. Donovan, the insurance lawyer who went on a Cold War secret mission to negotiate the trade of a captured Russian spy for the captured US spy plane pilot Francis Gay Powers.  That Russian spy was Rudolph Abel, played by Mark Rylance – himself perhaps the best reason to see this movie.

Rylance is a top echelon Shakespearean actor from the UK – best known in the US for his star turn as the dour Thomas Cromwell in the television miniseries Wolf Hall.  In a remarkably minimalist yet evocative performance, Rylance reveals a man who lives by a code and is doggedly loyal to his own misguided cause – with absolutely no expectations of fairness or mercy from anyone else.  The effect is to make us sympathize with a guy who is trying to give our most menacing enemy our dearest nuclear secrets.  As my friend Karyn noted about Rylance, “less is more”.

This is not a great movie.  Sure, Spielberg is the master of entertainment (complete with sentimentally swelling music at the end).  After the movie’s riveting opening sequence of spy craft, we settle into a sometimes ponderous segment showing the Abel trial and the U-2 missions.  Bridge of Spies takes off again when Hanks’ Donovan must head behind the Iron Curtain.

[SPOILER ALERT – After seeing the film, I was compelled to research James B. Donovan to see if he really represented Abel and negotiated both the Abel-for-Powers deal AND the release of over a thousand Cuban prisoners from the Bay of Pigs fiasco.  Indeed, he did – all of the acts depicted in the movie seem to be factual.  But the real James B. Donovan was not the Everyman portrayed by Spielberg and Hanks.  Before going into private practice, Donovan served a stint as the General Counsel of the OSS – the predecessor of the CIA.  While slipping off to East Berlin to barter for Powers, he was on the New York City Board of Education.  And, instead of returning to obscurity after bringing Powers back to the US, he ran for US Senate from New York.]

 

DVD/Stream of the Week: A MOST WANTED MAN – a last look at Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliance

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Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman in A MOST WANTED MAN
Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman in A MOST WANTED MAN

Espionage thrillers adapted from John le Carré novels, like A Most Wanted Man, are so good because le Carré, himself a former British intelligence operative, understand that intelligence services, riddled with bureaucratic jealousies and careerist rivalries, are not monoliths. His very human spies spend as much energy fighting each other as they do fighting the enemy. As a result, le Carré’s stories are more complex and character-driven than a standard “good-guys-hunt-down-a-terrorist” thriller plot.

That’s also the case with A Most Wanted Man, with which le Carré moves from the Cold War to the War of Terror. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Günther, the leader of a German anti-terrorism unit in Hamburg. He must track down a possible Chechen terrorist while parrying off other German security forces, the CIA (Robin Wright), a shady banker (Willem Dafoe) and a do-gooder human rights attorney (Rachel McAdams). It’s the classic le Carré three-dimensional-chess-against-the-clock, and it works as an engrossing thriller.

But the A Most Wanted Man’s biggest asset is a searing performance by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman. Günther is a canny and determined guy who needs to outsmart everyone else and manipulate forces beyond his control – and Hoffman nails it. His final scene is a spectacular explosion of emotion. (So soon after Hoffman’s death, it’s impossible to watch him here, with a huge belly and with his character chain-smoking and swilling whiskey, and not think of his final relapse into his ultimately fatal addiction; for this reason, A Most Wanted Man may be even more effective after a few years have passed.)

That being said, Robin Wright’s role as a duplicitous, shark-like CIA officer is under-written and doesn’t let her show her acting chops like House of Cards. Dafoe and McAdams are good in their roles. I was distracted by Grigoriy Dobrygin’s performance as the Chechen, which looked like bad Jeremy Davies without the twitches. The fine German actress Nina Hoss (Barbara) plays Hoffman’s assistant, and I hope we start to see her in more English language roles.

But the bottom line is that A Most Wanted Man is, overall, a satisfying thriller, and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance is reason enough to watch it. (BTW le Carré’s screen masterpiece is the 1979 series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is available on DVD from Netflix.)  A Most Wanted Man is available on DVD from Netflix and Redbox and streaming from Amazon, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube, Google Play and Xbox Video.

A MOST WANTED MAN: a last look at Philip Seymour Hoffman’s brilliance

by
Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman in A MOST WANTED MAN
Willem Dafoe and Philip Seymour Hoffman in A MOST WANTED MAN

Espionage thrillers adapted from John le Carré novels, like A Most Wanted Man, are so good because le Carré, himself a former British intelligence operative, understand that intelligence services, riddled with bureaucratic jealousies and careerist rivalries, are not monoliths.  His very human spies spend as much energy fighting each other as they do fighting the enemy.  As a result, le Carré’s stories are more complex and character-driven than a standard “good-guys-hunt-down-a-terrorist” thriller plot.

That’s also the case with A Most Wanted Man, with which le Carré moves from the Cold War to the War of Terror.  Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Günther, the leader of a German anti-terrorism unit in Hamburg.  He must track down a possible Chechen terrorist while parrying off other German security forces, the CIA (Robin Wright), a shady banker (Willem Dafoe) and a do-gooder human rights attorney (Rachel McAdams).  It’s the classic le Carré three-dimensional-chess-against-the-clock, and it works as an engrossing thriller.

But the A Most Wanted Man’s biggest asset is a searing performance by the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Günther is a canny and determined guy who needs to outsmart everyone else and manipulate forces beyond his control – and Hoffman nails it.  His final scene is a spectacular explosion of emotion.  (So soon after Hoffman’s death, it’s impossible to watch him here, with a huge belly and with his character chain-smoking and swilling whiskey, and not think of his final relapse into his ultimately fatal addiction; for this reason, A Most Wanted Man may be even more effective after a few years have passed.)

That being said, Robin Wright’s role as a duplicitous, shark-like CIA officer is under-written and doesn’t let her show her acting chops like House of Cards.  Dafoe and McAdams are good in their roles.  I was distracted by Grigoriy Dobrygin’s performance as the Chechen, which looked like bad Jeremy Davies without the twitches.  The fine German actress Nina Hoss (Barbara) plays Hoffman’s assistant, and I hope we start to see her in more English language roles.

But the bottom line is that A Most Wanted Man is, overall, a satisfying thriller, and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance is reason enough to catch it in the theaters.  (BTW le Carré’s screen masterpiece is the 1979 series Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, which is available on DVD from Netflix.)