Review of Our Kind of Traitor (2016) by Michael O — 13 Jul 2016

It's not every day that I find myself trying to write about something but finding myself unable to actually type much out because said thing doesn't even warrant that much analysis or discussion.

It sounds blunt, but Our Kind of Traitor is the kind of movie that just doesn't have enough going for it in order to have much written about it. Whether or not this movie really deserves to exist is up for (arbitrary) debate, but it's just so underdeveloped and boring that I don't really think that it does, and it surely doesn't deserve the actors that it has.

The film is based off of the John le Carre novel of the same name, which I haven't read because I'm classless trash. While on vacation in Marrakech, Morocco, a British couple (Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris) get tied up with Russian oligarch Dima (Stellan Skarsgard) involved in money laundering, and the couple is then led through Europe as they're caught between the Russian Mafia and British Central Intelligence.

This may sound interesting, but it really isn't at all. There isn't one clear-cut issue with the movie; the movie is just drab as a whole. The mileage that the movie gets out of its characters is actually dependent on the performers, and of course McGregor and Harris are always charming.

They've been in similar roles before, namely in The Ghost Writer and the last two Bond films, respectively, and they know what they're doing, as does Skarsgard in a flashy role. But the script assumes that the viewer has way more interest in anything that's happening than they're likely to indeed have.

The story is hard to care about and confusing as a result, and there doesn't seem to be enough material to cover 107 minutes. It's after about the halfway point that I was officially and firmly placed within the territory of boredom.

That's pretty much all that I can say about the movie. It has some nice cinematography--specifically in regards to use of reflections--and it could have maybe made a decent three- or four-part miniseries, since maybe then the events and characters would have actually been developed.

It feels more like something that would be on the BBC instead of in theaters as well. While Our Kind of Traitor may not have one clear-cut problem, all of its problems share one characteristic--the movie is boring because of its issues.

Just watch The Ghost Writer instead. 4/10, bad, two thumbs down, below average, etc.