Our Kind of Traitor

First Hit:  Really nice build up for first half,  just sustains the intensity through the back half, but ends quite nicely.

My wife mentioned to me that she thought “Our Kind of Traitor” is a lackluster title for a film and I agree.

There are a couple of stories going on in this film:  First we have and see a Perry and Gail (Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts respectively) struggling as a married couple. And second we have a Russian laced espionage thriller. How do these two stories meet? Struggling as a couple, Perry and Gail are on holiday in Morocco to try to bring some romance back into their ten-year relationship.

They are very different people; Perry is a poetic professor at a prestigious university and Gail is a workaholic lawyer who makes a lot of money. In a Moroccan restaurant, Gail gets a work call and has to leave so Perry gets propositioned by a gregarious Russian named Dima (Stellan Skarsgard) to join his party for a drink. Dima takes a liking to Perry and invites him to a late night party followed by an early morning tennis match. Their friendship grows and Dima asks Perry to deliver a thumb drive to MI6 in London when he returns home.

As head money launderer for the Russians, Dima suspects he and his family will be killed soon after a bank deal transpires in London. Gail thinks Perry is not doing a smart thing by going through with the delivery but despite her opinion, he follows through.

The tale heats up after they deliver the thumb drive to MI6 Agent Hector (Damian Lewis) but starts to fall off in intensity as the cat and mouse game begins to drag on. However, in the end, Dima wants to save his family, Perry and Gail may get closer, and Hector wants to put a nail in the coffin of his former boss whom he suspects as selling his soul and being a traitor.

McGregor was perfect because he portrayed the intelligence, compassion and integrity this role required. Watts was wonderful as the smart, quick witted wife while in the end wholly supporting her husband’s actions. Skarsgard was sublime. His intensity, deep boisterous growls, and single-minded objective made him the right man for this role. Lewis was adroitly a great choice as the MI6 agent, who was willing to move outside the box to follow his revenge. Hossein Amini wrote a good screenplay from the John le Carre novel. And despite the strong start and mediocre back half, Susanna White’s direction, in the end, brought the whole thing together rather well.

Overall:  One of the better film versions of a John le Carre story.

Drive

First Hit:  A perfect role for Ryan Gosling and a very good film.

When an actor fits the role and it's within their wheelhouse, then add an interesting story, it is a pleasure to drop into the story and let it go.

Drive does this because the film is perfect for Gosling who plays the “Driver”. There are times when a character needs to have a historic storyline to make his character believable. However great acting, as delivered in this particular role, doesn't require this type of development to make the character and film work. In Drive we have the later. 

Driver is a mechanic at a small garage run by Shannon (played by Bryan Cranston). Driver also works as a Hollywood film stunt driver, and does odd driving jobs for robberies. He runs into a neighbor woman named Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) who has a young son. He is immediately attracted to Irene and her boy. The chemistry between them is obvious. There are lots of moments of silence between them, but they say so much.

Irene is married to a Standard (played by Oscar Isaac) who is in prison and when he gets out he owes money to the mob that protected him while he was in prison. For payback, the mob asks him to do a job and he solicits Driver to help him.

The job goes bad and the local mob is now after the money that Driver is holding. Driver wants to give the money back to protect Irene but Bernie (played by Albert Brooks) and Nino (played by Ron Perlman) want everyone eliminated that know about this blown job.

Gosling is perfect as the quiet, private, intelligent and remotely caring Driver. This is a grand performance because he says so very little but provides so much information. Mulligan in a role that matches her age is wonderful. Her ability to play off of the quiet Driver is amazing. Cranston is very good as they guy beholding to too many people and continues to have “bad luck”. Isaac has the right look and feel of the guy scared and tough at the same time. Brooks is the surprise here. He’s great as the local mob ringleader with a dark heart. The defining moment is when he kills Shannon in a caring, subtle, and decisive way. Perlman is just right for this off-handed second in command guy who at “59” continues to screw things up. Hossein Amini wrote a very good screen play including when to have silence in a character’s role. Nicolas Winding Refn directed this with a great feel for LA and the type of characters which reside there.

Overall: I fully enjoyed this film but I would have like just a little more driving.