SPY GAME OF THRONES.

“MI-5 – not 9-to-5” was the nifty tagline appended to BBC spy series Spooks when it emerged in 2002. It served notice that this wasn’t going to be a routine show, and, like the US’s 24, ushered in a rougher, more morally compromised type of post-911 spy drama.

Over 10 years the show, centred around the UK’s domestic security intelligence agency (as opposed to MI-6’s international branch), quickly gained a reputation for fast-paced, slick yet gritty storylines, populated by a revolving cast of conflicted characters who, in what became the show’s trademark, were regularly and unceremoniously bumped off – as established in its second-ever episode, when a supposed lead, played by a rising British TV actress, was thrust face-first into a deep-fat fryer.

Since then, numerous cast members including David Oyelowo (Selma’s Martin Luther King) and The Hobbit’s Richard Armitage met untimely, often gruesome ends. It became the series’ USP, one that, without giving away specifics, they gleefully continue in the movie adaptation. I guess every national institution should observe its traditions.

Spooks fans will no doubt be glad this isn’t a complete makeover that junks everything but the brand name. Series mainstay Harry Pearce (Peter Firth), Head of Counter-terrorism, returns, though he’s quickly blamed and forced to resign when major terrorist suspect Adem Qasim (Elyes Gabel) is sprung from MI-5 custody.

Harry disappears, so the agency calls in his former protégé Will Holloway (Kit Harington) to track him down. Harry decommissioned Will some three years prior, and also had a hand in the shady death of his father, another former MI-5 agent, which gives Will added motivation to find him. When he does, however, Harry reveals that someone within the agency deliberately freed Qasim and he needs Will’s help to prevent the traitor destroying MI-5 itself.

Armed with a neat if familiar set-up and its ruthless reputation, then, Spooks: The Greater Good looks to expand its cinematic horizons. Director Bharat Nalluri, who helmed the first and last-ever TV episodes (and was once touted to direct undercover thriller The Tourist) and his crew are clearly conscious of both their competitors and the pitfalls of TV shows failing to step up on the big screen. But, despite their best intentions, they’re faced with an immediate dilemma: if you can’t match the star power or bang-for-buck spectacle of Bond or Bourne, how do you get their audiences to defect over to you?

One solution might have been to delve deeper undercover, burrowing into character and ramping up the internal tensions: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy without the nicotine-stained ‘70s trappings. Yet Firth aside, and then mainly because of Harry’s world-weary history, everyone else isn’t so much a spook as a ghostly cipher. The supporting cast, Jennifer Ehle, Homeland’s David Harewood and returning TV alumni Tim McInnerny, Lara Pulver and Hugh Simon are all fine but given little with which to work. Good luck naming one trait about any of them outside their main narrative function.

Then there’s the leading man quandary. Harington is decent enough in Game of Thrones, bolstered by multiple plotlines and a standout ensemble cast. Here, having to shoulder the bulk of the streamlined action, he’s stymied by an identikit lead role (brooding rebel with daddy issues) that only encourages us to view him as this season’s good-looking, athletic young Brit, swept along by the success of the huge fantasy epic he’s a part of, but woefully exposed in the open. Call it The Bloom Identity. And while he’s probably a stronger actor than Orlando B., he needs a better showcase than this one.

Besides, Spooks the movie won’t relinquish its action credentials and while they’re spatially coherent and decently paced, the sequences simply aren’t as adrenalizing as its best modern rivals (say, Casino Royale’s parkour scene or The Bourne Supremacy’s car chase). When it embraces its own more modest London locations – hello Brixton! – and more intimate confrontations, a taut intensity suddenly shifts into focus.

“The closest thing I have to a friend is someone who thinks I ruined his life,” Harry laments at one point. And the theme of how pursuing the greater good causes untold personal collateral damage is resonant. But ultimately Spooks is stranded too often in no man’s land: not lavishly explosive enough to satisfy action junkies, too sketchily developed to engage those after a more emotional investment. Perhaps reconciling the two with this particular scale and resources is a mission impossible.

The Verdict

Competent, watchable and the slick/gritty aesthetics and ethically murky dilemmas from the TV series are honoured. But contrary to the original series tagline, this MI-5 is a bit too 9-to-5: far too routine and neither big nor smart enough to justify its big screen incarnation, particularly set against such fierce competition. It’s hard to picture the international audience for an ongoing franchise.
Spooks: The Greater Good on Movies

5.5

To read the original article on IGN.com click here: Spooks: The Greater Good review