Recommendations of the Editorial team
Ten years ago, Susanne Bier directed “The Night Manager” based on a novel by John Le Carré. David Farr had moved the action to Cairo in 2011, where Tom Hiddleston as Jonathan Pine works as a night porter to spy on an arms smuggling ring. He meets the charismatic gun dealer Richard Roper (Hugh Laurie), sneaks into his entourage and becomes a kind of family friend and carer for Roper’s son. Beer shows the desert of Egypt, the luxury hotel and Ropers estate in Mallorca, luxurious yachts and expensive cars under palm trees. In the end, Roper is killed by hired assassins. That’s what people thought.
The sequel: Pine returns
Now David Farr has written a sequel with John Le Carré’s son Simon Cornwell, in which Tom Hiddleston once again plays the agent who, after a change of identity, works for the special unit of “Night Owls”. The night owls work in the office and watch London on screens. Pine goes to a psychotherapist. “What scares me is men like you sitting across from me smiling. And at some point you explode.” Pine smiles. “I’m the man who won’t explode.”
As always with John Le Carré, there is something called River House. And there’s a secret service patriarch, Rex Mayhew (Douglas Hedge), who was a mentor to Pine. He is murdered in his home, but left Pine a cell phone and a book about British trees. The secret services compete with each other. In short, an intelligence branch wants to bring about regime change in Colombia, and arms dealers profit from it.
Of course, Jonathan Pine doesn’t stop at observing. He owes himself something. In London he meets the mysterious beauty Roxana Bolanos (Camila Morrone) and in South America the obscure Teddy Dos Santos (Diego Calva), who doesn’t trust him, but then he does. Even in the tennis club you are already talking to “My dear” and “My friend”.
Roper’s return from exile
There are four episodes of “Night Manager 2” so far, and it can now be revealed that Richard Roper, who was declared dead by Angela Burr (Olivia Colman) years ago, lives in exile in South America and continues to do business, surrounded by his dogs and sometimes an old Englishman who comes to visit. Hugh Laurie gives speeches about the lost British Empire, the blessings of colonialism and how to benefit from all players.
“Today it’s just self-determination and panpipes.” He sings sentimentally with the British veteran who wants to retire: “… for he’s an English man.” Roper has been given a new British passport. He just has one more thing to do. Then he pulls a photo out of the fax machine and sees what thing he needs to do.
Georgi Banks-Davies directed the film instead of Susanne Bier and masters the sophisticated scenarios, the hotels and the asylums of the rich just as well. But the best thing is the conspiracies and the jovial conversations that don’t disguise threats. That was already the case when Alec Guinness played George Smiley in “Queen, King, Ace, Spy”. And the glorious British Empire had already fallen.