Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) Directed by Tomas Alfredson. Written by: Bridget O’Connor, Peter Straughan and John le Carré (novel). Starring: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy IMDB says: “In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent within MI6’s echelons.”
I want to talk to you about a mystery. There’s a mole in MI6 (you may better know it as James Bond’s employer) and he’s up as high as it goes. Just at tensions are mounting in the cold war and the relationship between the Brits and their American “cousins” is stressed to say the least. There are 5 key players here, all of them resting in the upper echelon of the British intelligence community. When the head of the agency is pushed out by an opportunistic up-and-comer, he leaves with just one thought on his mind, there’s a mole in the agency, and they must be stopped. After he passes, the task falls to the former Deputy Director, George Smiley. Smiley is hot on the trail and is forced to question the people that for years he has trusted the most. As he works his way through informants, researchers, and information, he builds his case ultimately identifying the mole: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.
Folks, this is a lengthy and involved movie. In fact, for the press screening they passed out “dossiers” of information just so we’d be able to keep the codewords, covernames, and backstories straight. Don’t go into this thinking it’s a spy movie like Bond, or any of the other typical action-style spy movies. This is an old-school spy mystery. Yes, it is terribly complex; but it needs to be. It needs to twist and turn, it needs to build and grow backstories for every character, and it absolutely needs to keep the audience guessing.
All of the elements of this film worked to produce a deeply engaging experience that lures the viewer in and keeps him in suspense. Gary Oldman delivers a stunning performance as George Smiley and creates a character that assumes the role of the traditional spy, not the action hero badass, but the collector of information. And that’s what this story is really about at its heart, the collecting and piecing together of information. One of the big concerns a lot of people had for this film is that the novel it is based on is very lengthy, and very dense. It truly is a lot of material to fit into a feature length film, but they are able to do it. And they do it well, the story does not feel at all rushed or as if something is missing. The writers deserve a great deal of credit for making sense of the original story and presenting it in a way in which, the audience is not left complete bewildered or even worse, completely bored.
I have to give this film a high rating because for so many reasons it deserves one. However, my one complaint would have to be the ending. For all of the complex story lines and hyper-developed characters, the build-up to the ending really gets your hopes up, and then they come crashing down. The ending was not terrible, but it wasn’t thrilling and it did not explode the way it really should have. In this case, the build up to the climax was far more climactic than the climax itself.
