Went to see this film with my friends Bev and Aj at the Leeds/Bradford Odeon this morning.
IMDB says: When a terrorist escapes custody during a routine handover, Will Holloway must team with disgraced MI5 Intelligence Chief Harry Pearce to track him down before an imminent terrorist attack on London.
In this Bharat Nalluri (Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day, The Player) directed and Jonathan Brackley (Humans, Hotel Babylon), Sam Vincent (Spooks, Humans) and David Wolstencroft (Spooks) screenplay, Kit Harington (Game of Thrones, Testament of Youth) stars as Will Holloway and Peter Firth (The Hunt for Red October, Spooks) as Harry Pearce.
Brought in by MI5 and asked by Mace (Tim McInnerny, Notting Hill, 101 Dalmations), Geraldine Maltby (Jennifer Ehle, The King's Speech, Zero Dark Thirty), Warrender (David Harewood, Homeland, Hustle) and new guy, American (Eliot Levey, The Queen, Philomena) to bring in Pearce before escaped terrorist Qasim (Elyes Gabel, World War Z, Interstellar) can wreak havoc on London.
Trusting no-one, least of all Pearce, Holloway must work with and question other agents, including June (Tuppence Middleton, The Imitation Game, Jupiter Ascending), Robert Vass (Michael Wildman, The Sweeney, The Bourne Ultimatum) and Hannah Santo (Eleanor Matsuura, Breaking and Entering, The Love Punch) to draw him in. Pearce says there is a mole in MI5 and he must make a deal with Qasim to find out who, but when he sacrifices his own undercover operative Erin Watts (Lara Pulver, Live, Die, Repeat, The Special Relationship), can Holloway trust him?
Four years after the final episode of Spooks on the BBC, a hit espionage series, this feature film has many nods to the programme (though you don't need to have seen the TV show to understand it), and though the film is clearly trying to compete with the likes of James Bond and Bourne, it felt just like an extension of the programme, though admittedly Pearce does have elements of George Smiley about him. Unlike Bond and Bourne, and where the film has its plus points because of, it is more realistic in that they are expendable, just another case officer that can be silenced if they don't dance to the right tune. But that is where the believability ends though as I couldn't quite get my head around the first scenes - there is no way we would transfer a wanted terrorist through London during bad traffic without a moveable escort to ease the process, not to mention only have two cars with two officers as back up to the armed pair inside the transporter truck.
There wasn't much in the way of an original plot or character development, but it was refreshing in that it didn't feel Americanised like some action thrillers, though the shots of London and other parts of Britain almost felt like overkill, but the acting was superb. Firth and Harington were a great pairing and I felt echoes of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in the dynamic.
Trivia: Kit Harington received training from an ex-SAS soldier so that he could play a former MI5 agent in the film and the film follows the British TV series that ran on the BBC 2002-2011 but neither Jennifer Ehle or Kit Harington starred in it.
You can do good or do well. 6.5/10
#SpooksTheGreaterGood #KitHarington #PeterFirth
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