The Constant Gardener (2005)

A political intrigue involving British government officials and drug companies plays out in Africa in this mostly satisfying film adaptation of the John le Carré novel, with Rachel Weisz playing an aid worker who dies mysteriously after uncovering a conspiracy and Ralph Fiennes her diplomat husband left to fill-in the movie's two-hour run-time until an unlikely but convenient "reveal-all" letter is finally dug up.

★★★☆☆

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Our Kind Of Traitor (2016)

Even Ewan McGregor's everyman, a university Poetics professor, says two-thirds of the way through this John le Carré adaptation that he doesn't know why he is still in the picture - having been randomly chosen at the outset to run a message for the Russian mafia's creative accountant, the prof doggedly sticks around, volunteering further help when it makes zero sense for him to do anything other than remove himself entirely from the escalating danger that increasingly involves British Intelligence and dead bodies, but despite this thin plotting, Our Kind of Traitor is an entertaining thriller, tense rather than full of action, set in glamorous locations like Marrakesh, London and Paris, and a bit like Patriot Games in the way a couple's domestic everyday is threatened suddenly by spy thrills.

★★★☆☆

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