Despite its stellar cast, Our Kind of Traitor is neither an outright artistic success nor a sure-fire popcorn monster. Yet it has qualities to make it glow for lovers of cinema — including a backdrop that is utterly plausible in its currency, politically and emotionally.In a lawless nightmare state deliberately modelled on Great Britain, all honour in public life has been degraded. The thieves, perverts, drug-dealers, people-traffickers, murderers, armed gangs and power-brokers collude with a silky, hedonistic elite to further debase normal life. They enforce the wolfsbane of their greed on a crushed populace. (Le Carré wrote in anger.)The queasy relationship between British toffs and the post-Soviet Russian mafia is stripped bare. While there is violence, the pace tends to be mundane. Two lovers (McGregor and Harris) seek to mend a rift in their relations while on holiday in Morocco. They are entrapped by a Russian crime kingpin (Skarsgård) into taking a secret memory stick home to...
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