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Review: Tom Hiddleston sparkles as 'Night Manager' spy

   For now, at least, we can manage quite well without James Bond.

 

 

 

For now, at least, we can manage quite well without James Bond.

It may be years before another Bond movie arrives, but 007 was never the world’s only fictional spy and Ian Fleming was never our only espionage writer. There’s the equally well regarded John le Carré, who has given us AMC's addictive, enthralling The Night Manager (Tuesday, 10 ET/PT, *** 1/2 out of four) and its soldier-turned-spy Jonathan Pine — irresistibly played in this sumptuous six-part British import by Tom Hiddleston. Who proves, by the way, that he wouldn’t make a bad Bond himself, should the need arise.

Get used to those kinds of comparisons, because they’re inevitable — and they go beyond Hiddleston’s effortlessly sexy, endlessly resourceful and frequently recuperating hero. There’s the villainous Richard Roper, a coiled snake of an arms dealer played by Hugh Laurie with an expert mix of charm and bile that recalls Diamonds Are Forever's Blofeld. He even has a Diamond-hard assistant with a Mr. Wint twist, imbued here by Tom Hollander with both malevolence and melancholy.

 

Thankfully, there’s the gorgeously shot scenery we’ve come to expect from such films: a hotel in the Swiss Alps, an island fortress on Majorca. And there’s the inevitable, beautiful Bond girls, the first of whom always dies.

Still, for all the comparisons, Pine is not Bond. He’s a man drawn into a dangerous sting by an urge for revenge and a strong sense of right and wrong. And he’s a man being led by British Agent Angela Burr, played by Broadchurch’s Olivia Colman with her usual unerring instinct for how normal people behave in abnormal situations.

Anyone who's read the book may be surprised to see that Burr, who was a man in the novel, is now female and pregnant (as Colman was during filming).Take that as a cue that the book has been both updated and modified by writer David Farr, with approval from le Carré, who serves as a producer and makes a cameo appearance.

 

éTheir Pine is the unlikeliest of operatives, the night manager of a Cairo hotel who, through an admittedly unlikely set of circumstances, is recruited by Burr to infiltrate Roper’s arms-dealing operation. They have a few allies, led by an American agent (David Harewood) and, perhaps, Roper’s girlfriend (Elizabeth Debicki). Their enemies, however, are legion, and stretch high into the British government. And more dangerously still, Pine faces the risk posed by the allure of Roper's billionaire lifestyle. 

Pine's job is to prove that Roper, a well-respected philanthropist, is actually selling weapons in the Middle East. Inner demons will be revealed and suspicions will arise. So will spy-movie cliches, from the hubris that seems to blind Roper to the obvious to the seeming need of the genre to abuse women, especially while they’re partially clothed.

Yet The Night Manager overcomes cliches, objections and a few wobbly American accents, in large part thanks to the combined appeal and talents of Hiddleston, Colman, Laurie and Hollander. Together, they prove that action TV can be made at a high level of quality, and quality TV can be entertaining.

How did we manage without it?

 

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