Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Damien Lewis, Naomi Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Mark Stanley, Alicia Von Rittberg, Mark Gattis, Jeremy Northam, Saskia Reeves, Alec Utgoff, Pawel Szajda, Khalid Abdalla, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Velibor Topic, Dolya Gavanski, Radivoje Bukvic, Marek Oravec.

It is only right that John Le Carré’s work is still seen as being amongst the finest of post Second World War espionage and spy fiction, from the remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy to the hit television series Night Manager, John Le Carré’ is revered and respected, yet somewhere along the line that blurs one ideology from another, an author’s work can be muddled when adapted by another for the big screen; it is a fate that awaits what should be a good interesting film, Our Kind Of Traitor.

It is not written in stone that every adaptation of a John Le Carré novel must be admired or held up as a prized achievement in the spy driven genre, and it certainly doesn’t help the screen writer’s cause when anything they put down for the screen will be always compared and contrasted to the magnificent Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, however such comparisons will always appear in the thoughts of the determined reader or genre fan when they are presented with a film that in parts almost reaches the heights that the author himself attains or and most disappointingly struggles to be seen as anything but a tired cliché of times past.

It doesn’t help the film’s grounds for optimism when the so called central hero of the piece is reduced to being an onlooker, a voyeur of his own making as the noose tightens around those that first betrayed the service and those making money out of the situation. So much could have been done with Ewan McGregor’s character Perry Makepeace that the thought of it makes the normally astute Mr. McGregor pale and shrink on screen in the eyes of the cinema goer. A near impossible job achieved with minimum fuss and little to captivate beyond the expected looking pensive and dogged.

If the film carries weight and gravitas anywhere it is in Stellan Skarsgård performance as the Russian Oligarch and muscle Dima; a rich and unsettling performance to which Mr. Skarsgård excels and captures with the ease of a man placing his order at the bar and finding the only spare table in a room crammed to bursting.

Comparisons will always come about when watching a specific genre, when immersing yourself into a much loved writer’s body of work and to witness Damien Lewis as Hector brings back memories of the great Alec Guinness as the truly adept George Smiley, the smile and casual straightforwardness in the role, one that is a gift to the audience.

Our Kind Of Traitor may not be John Le Carré’s most well known work but it is one that deserves perhaps better treatment that it has been afforded overall by the makers of this particular dogged and at times languishing drama. Muddling, at times insincere, Our Kind Of Traitor is its own defector.

Ian D. Hall