A tightly controlled British spy thriller with more brains than heart, “Our Kind of Traitor” is a dismal, low-energy affair.
On vacation in Marrakech, a London professor (Ewan McGregor) having difficulties with his wife (Naomie Harris) strikes up a friendship with a gregarious, vaguely seedy Russian (Stellan Skarsgård) who asks for their help in delivering a memory stick to the British spy agency MI6 (ably represented by a natty Damian Lewis). It contains scandalous info about Swiss bank accounts.
The story lacks both kiss-kiss and bang-bang, though: Talky and slow-moving, the John le Carré adaptation fails to make us care much about the Russian, who turns out to be a master money launderer, or make the unlikely friendship with the professor credible. Even the titular character, a British pol who is responsible for his colleague’s son going to prison, is a thinly imagined background figure whom we meet only briefly. For all its machinations and scene changes, the movie’s emotional temperature is strictly room.