Here’s a thriller involving a huge amount of talking, sprinting and fighting and more sprinting. People talk tensely to each other – and then they’re off like greyhounds, sprinting in all directions. It’s based on David Wolstencraft’s smash-hit TV show and makes an interesting attempt to weld John le Carré to Homeland: plenty of sneery, ennui-ridden, treachery-obsessed Brits, with sexy new ingredients of surveillance and violence. The subliminal resemblance to Homeland is further achieved by casting David Harewood as a top British spymaster, effectively the equivalent of the American role he once played.
I think Spooks works on television, but the tighter narrative arc of a feature film exposes the absurdities and contrivances. Too often it’s just silly. Peter Firth plays the somewhat preposterous Sir Harry Pearce, an enigmatic intelligence chief who appears to go rogue after making a terrible mistake – now apparently on a mission to discover the Tinker-Tailor-type mole in the upper reaches of the service. Kit Harington is the smoulderingly sexy young agent detailed to “bring him in”. The dastardly terrorist and the final wheeze for foiling him are both highly implausible. However, the opening sequence is good, and Tuppence Middleton does well as the young agent with an edge of steel.
