A young idealist joins the United Nations as a novice diplomat. He wants to change the world and make a difference. He’s immediately brought under the wing of a slick seasoned UN undersecretary who makes no apologies for twisting truths and avoiding inconvenient facts.
Before long, a global conspiracy has been unearthed. People start dying. The young diplomat finds himself in the cross-hairs of a brutal Iraqi crime boss and on a shortlist of possible suspects at the CIA. He is forced to choose between what he knows is right and what he has fought so long to achieve.
Backstabbing for Beginners, the new film by Danish director Per Fly, was inspired by the true-life tale of Michael Soussan, who wrote Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy.
It sounds thrilling on paper, this tale of rampant corruption within the international Oil for Food program, which at the time was the largest humanitarian program in UN history. And it’s the kind of globe-trotting political thriller that you’d expect Tom Cruise or Matt Damon to headline, and to be an early contender for numerous film awards.
So, why isn’t it a better movie?
Fly assembles a solid cast. Ben Kingsley plays Pasha, the UN undersecretary responsible for the Oil for Food effort, with his signature chutzpah and perfectly timed profane outbursts. Jacqueline Bisset marks a welcome return as Christina Dupre, another overseer of the program who is based in Iraq. And Belçim Bilgin lights up the screen as Nashim, a Kurdish femme fatale and spy.
The weight of Backstabbing for Beginners falls on Theo James, who plays Soussan with an equal measure of clenched-jaw reserve and wide-eyed naiveté. You may recognize James from the Underworld vampire-werewolf franchise or the YA-centric Divergent films. He’s better here than he’s been in those movies, but there’s something still lacking in his performance. I struggled throughout my viewing wondering if maybe Soussan would have been more compelling if played a little rougher around the edges and less fresh-faced and eager.
Overall, Backstabbing for Beginners is entertaining enough, but it fails to really sink its grip in. The United Nations scandal feels glossed over and reduced to a greatest hits presentation. James’ approach to Soussan lacks urgency. This is a guy who, we’re shown, gets approached by a CIA spook at the end of his first day working for Pasha. That might be enough to make most people reconsider careers. When James falls hard for Nashim, it’s based almost entirely on them sharing a cigarette while she tells him that his predecessor was murdered for uncovering the Oil for Food conspiracy. Even Kingsley, as good as he is, lacks that meaty moment when he commands the screen in anger or indignation after his Pasha is double-crossed by Soussan and handed to the CIA to try and flip.
Part of the problem is how quickly the events unfold. As I said previously, less than an hour after clocking out from his first day, James is approached in a bodega by the CIA. The next day he’s on a red-eye to Baghdad. That night he discovers a group of Iraqi thugs in his consulate hotel room offering him a bribe. Within a week, he’s in possession of an encrypted thumb drive containing information that got his predecessor killed.
Fly’s approach is to keep his foot firmly on the gas, even when his movie demands a quiet stretch to allow his audience to digest everything that’s happening and his characters to act more like real people and less like characters in a movie.
Following so closely on the heels of better, more detailed historical dramas like The Post, such issues keep you from forming a true connection with Sousson or generating much anger at the glaring greed he helps expose.
Discerning adults starved for a red meat movie might find Backstabbing for Beginners more satisfying. After all, this is the kind of counter-programming that sometimes reaps a windfall, especially when pitted against an omnipresent blockbuster like Avengers: Infinity War.
John W. Allman has spent more than 25 years as a professional journalist and writer, but he’s loved movies his entire life. Good movies, awful movies, movies that are so gloriously bad you can’t help but champion them. Since 2009, he has cultivated a review column and now a website dedicated to the genre films that often get overlooked and interviews with cult cinema favorites like George A. Romero, Bruce Campbell and Dee Wallace. Contact him at Blood Violence and Babes.com, on Facebook @BloodViolenceBabes or on Twitter @BVB_reviews.
This article appears in May 3-10, 2018.
