OUR KIND OF TRAITOR Trailer
With the spy genre in full resurgence, audiences may not be salivating for another entry. Don’t sleep on Our Kind of Traitor, though, because it’s based on a John le Carré novel (same name), which comes with the promise of a different kind of espionage.
Carré generally avoids a lot of action, preferring to keep his spies stuck in the murkiness of the real world. It’s a slower, more brooding style of tension, allowing time to explore social or political ideas that give the films based on his work more depth than the usual action-oriented movies. Our Kind of Traitor seems to be following suit, featuring an English couple who gets sucked into the spy world while trying to save a Russian money launderer’s innocent family.
The film is adapted by screenwriter Hossein Amini, who wrote Drive and an upcoming detective movie called The Snowman, which will star Michael Fassbender and is slated for a potential 2017 awards season run (I’m already chuckling thinking about an Oscars clip package featuring an ominous-looking snowman). It’s a silly title, but it means Amini landed another hard-boiled genre film. If he had messed up Our Kind of Traitor, I doubt he would have gotten hired for such a high profile project.
Director Susanna White is more of a question mark, with few features under her belt but several credits for successful television gigs (Bleak House, Jane Eyre, Generation Kill). She’s also signed on to helm the 2017 release Woman Walks Ahead, which will star Jessica Chastain. As with Amini, I don’t see her landing that gig if Our Kind of Traitor had gone poorly.
There’s a lot of quietly positive signs when you dig into Our Kind of Traitor, and that’s on top of the traditionally stacked cast that comes with a Carré adaptation. This should be a solid entry for the spy genre, and it’s got the potential to be something special.
Our Kind of Traitor is directed by Susanna White and stars Ewan McGregor, Damian Lewis, Stellan Skarsgård, and Naomie Harris. It will be released in the U.K. on May 13th, 2016 and in the U.S. on July 1st, 2016. International release dates can be found here.
Do you prefer your spy movies to be paces slow or fast? Let us know in the comments!
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