Contemporary spy movies can be said to fall into 2 broad categories: (1) 007 spinoffs, totally (e.g. Kingsman: The Secret Service, Matthew Vaughn, 2014, recently reviewed in this pages) or implicitly (e.g. the Mission Impossible franchise, see previous blog entry) comedic, or (2) purportedly serious dramatic portrayals of the craft (e.g. A Most Wanted Man, Anton Corbijn, 2014, also honoured with The MacMahonian's prose) in which the shadow of John le Carré tends to loom large and heavy. Spooks – The Greater Good is an example of the latter.
Spooks is the 5th feature directed by Bharat Nallunit, who spent the last 20 years directing mostly for TV and of whose previous output I think I saw “The Crow: Salvation” (2000) and recall it being mildly entertaining.
Spooks is a feature sequel to the long-running (2002-2011) eponymous BBC TV series, with much the same actors and characters. Here, they fight the requisite ultra-islamo-terrorist suicidal psycho (Elyes Gabel), bent in creating as much mayhem as possible with the purpose of (quote) “creating a better world”. “They” are old, wise, world weary chief counterspy Harry Pearce (Peter Firth, on the job 13 years and counting) and wide awake young underling counterspy Will Halloway (Kit Harrington), both adequately filling their cardboard roles.
The aforementioned retired British public servant has a lot to answer for (Le Carré, that is; in The MacMahonian's book, he scores 9 out of 10 for ambiance, 2 out of 10 for narrative intelligibility). After the demise of the USSR, pseudo-Muslim loonies have effectively taken over the banner of evilness and Spooks's only interesting feature is the attempt to partially portray events from the point of view of the Gabel character. Worthy if not persuasive. Otherwise, the script's recourse to building up viewer empathy toward characters before they are abruptly and brutally murdered, as intended expression of the cruelty of the intelligence trade, quickly wears off and the unintended final result is cartoony.
The kind of stuff you've seen many times before and often much better. If you haven't seen the TV series, this won't make you want to.