While on holiday in Antigua, a young Oxford academic and his
attorney girlfriend bump into a Russian millionaire. After a game of tennis
with the couple, friendship develops but this soon propels the two on a
tortuous journey to the City of London, Paris and the Alps. The couple finds
themselves trapped between the Russian Mafia and the British Secret Service,
none of which they can trust.
A couple find themselves lured into a Russian oligarch's
plans to defect are soon positioned between the Russian Mafia and the British
Secret Service, neither of whom they can trust.
The couple is propelled on a perilous journey through Paris
and Bern, a safe house in the French Alps, to the murky corners of the City of
London and an alliance with the British Government via a ruthless and
determined MI6 agent.
When Peter and his girlfriend, Gail, cross paths with the charismatic Dima on their Moroccan holiday, the forceful Russian is quick to challenge Peter to a friendly game of tennis. But this innocuous contest is not all it seems - Dima is a long-time servant of the Russian mafia, whose new boss, 'The Prince', wants him and his family dead. His only hope is to ask the unsuspecting Peter to broker him sanctuary with the British intelligence services, in return for exposing a vein of corruption that runs right to the heart of the City of London. Soon they find themselves on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps and, with the might of the Russian mafia closing in, begin to realise this particular match has the highest stakes of all.
When Peter and his girlfriend, Gail, cross paths with the charismatic Dima on their Moroccan holiday, the forceful Russian is quick to challenge Peter to a friendly game of tennis. But this innocuous contest is not all it seems - Dima is a long-time servant of the Russian mafia, whose new boss, 'The Prince', wants him and his family dead. His only hope is to ask the unsuspecting Peter to broker him sanctuary with the British intelligence services, in return for exposing a vein of corruption that runs right to the heart of the City of London. Soon they find themselves on a tortuous journey through Paris to a safe house in the Swiss Alps and, with the might of the Russian mafia closing in, begin to realise this particular match has the highest stakes of all.
It's moderately entertaining - although I'm guessing that the novel is richer in characterization - but both the main players come across as rather unlikely, Skarsgård as too gentle and McGregor as too gullible, and it was tough for me to hear Damian Lewis speaking in an upper class English accent when I've spent so much time watching him in "Homeland".
ReplyDeleteIt's so sleek and involving that it's easy to ignore the nagging plot holes. We're too busy imagining what we might do in the same situations.
John le Carre's novel is adapted with plenty of inventive style into a remarkably personal thriller, packed with thrills that find suspense in the characters and their predicament rather than pushy movie cliches.
ReplyDeleteWhite plays the moment of rupture with a banality that threatens to undermine our faith in her as storyteller more than in the system itself.
Perry Makepeace may be virtually incapable of making violence, but Dima has no such impediment, and things heat up when the Russian starts to feel cornered. So many of Skarsgård’s past performances rely on his intellect that it’s a rare pleasure to see him slip into such a physical role, whether he’s puffing his chest to show off Russian prison tattoos or strangling one of the Prince’s thugs with his bare hands.
ReplyDeleteThe film is solid but rarely achieves the tension for which it is clearly aiming.
The film is unlucky-feeling. At one point, Hossein Amini’s script was intended for Justin Kurzel to direct, before he went off to do Macbeth instead. Ralph Fiennes and Mads Mikkelsen were eyeing the two main roles.
ReplyDeleteThe trailer is even more of a letdown when you consider the fact that Susanna White, director of episodes of Boardwalk Empire and Generation Kill, was at the helm of the movie with a script from Drive scribe Hossein Amini. This just seems like one of those cases where the right blend of talent didn’t make for a good movie.