MOVIE REVIEW: 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy'

Not as fancy as Dracula, but still rather fancy. Rather fancy indeed.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a film you’ll like better if you let go of the cinematicversion of the spy we’ve come to know and love here in America. When we thinkspy, we think Sean Connery strapping a jet pack on his back or Tom Cruiseleaping off buildings and crashing through windows. We don’t see much of realspies because, well, they wouldn’t be very good at their jobs if we did.
The novelsof John le Carre often take a much more restrained view of what spies are anddo. Mr. Bond and Robert Ludlum’s Jason Bourne would be out of place here. Theseare stories filled with men in suits, sitting in offices reading files,speaking several languages by phone, and occasionally taking a shadowy meetupwith a representative from a foreign government. Spy novels rose to prominencein the Cold War era, but le Carre was one of the few authors who reallydepicted the work of spies for what it most often is: cold.
With that inmind, it would have been easy for director Tomas Alfredson to make a polishedbut unfeeling procedural film out of this story. There are no car chases in Tinker,Tailor, only one incident of real violence, and very few gorgeous womenwaiting for the film’s heroes in casinos and five-star hotels. It’s a storywithout glamour or any real passion, but Alfredson rises above all of that bypermeating his film with a constant intensity that rises and falls with thebeats of the plot. He lets a stellar cast do the rest, and the result is atruly excellent spy film.
In early ‘70sBritain, tensions are mounting in the intelligence service, known to itsoperatives as “The Circus.” The organization’s aging leader, Control (JohnHurt) believes that one of his agents is a Russian mole, and sends a trustedoperative (Mark Strong) to Hungary to ferret out some information. The missiongoes wrong, and Control and his right hand man, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) areforced out of the service. The leadership void is quickly filled by PercyAlleline (Toby Jones), who heads the Russian spying project that Control wasconvinced housed the mole.
A year laterControl is dead after a long illness, and Smiley is living quietly inretirement until he’s approached by the government secretary presiding over theintelligence committee (Oliver Lacon) and asked to determine once and for allif Control’s mole was real, and if so, who it is.
The rest ofthe film is a labyrinth of secrets and whispers as Smiley – with the help of aloyal spy within The Circus (Benedict Cumberbatch) and a frightened operativeon the run (Tom Hardy) – tries to narrow down the possibilities of Control’stheory and determine which of the men inside The Circus is a traitor. We areled to believe it could be one of four highly placed men: Alleline himself,codename “Tinker”, Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), codename “Tailor,” Roy Bland(Ciaran Hinds), codename “Soldier” and Toby Esterhase (David Denick), codename “Poorman.”
The firstthing I noticed about this film is that it’s not in a hurry. Spy thrillers aregenerally designed to move forward at breakneck pace, punctuated by chasesacross rooftops and barely plausible sex scenes. Tinker, Tailor is not a longfilm, but it is a patient one, using its two hour run time to explore everycorner of Smiley’s world, from his marital troubles to his morning swim. Itgrants us a familiarity we don’t normally have with our movie spies. We feel weknow George Smiley, as well as anyone really can, and the web that he’swillingly diving into suddenly becomes our web too.
The second thingI noticed was Alfredson’s continued mastery of light. His Swedish vampire film, Let the Right One In, was a gorgeous playground of fluorescent and halogencontrasts, and with Tinker, Tailor he shines yet again, creating a sumptuousneo-noir palette of shadows, shady rooms and dark alleyways.
But thecenter of the film, the heart, the thing that will keep spy lovers coming backover and over again, is Oldman. He is one of the finest actors in the world,noted for his ability to disappear completely into a character, and this timehe affirms it perhaps more than ever with what’s probably the most subtleperformance of his career. George Smiley is an extremely intelligent, worldlyman, but he’s not a flashy man. He’s not an angry man or a sensual man or acool man. There’s no gimmick for Oldman to latch on to. And yet he makes everyscene completely fascinating. He owns the movie, and in a film alongside wonderfulperformances by Firth, Jones, Hurt, Cumberbatch, Strong and Hardy, that’sreally saying something.
Tinker,Tailor, Soldier, Spy might not be what we’ve come to expect from spy films,but it is what we deserve. It’s a film that relies not on action or gadgets orexplosions to get its point across, but on solid storytelling, gorgeousphotography and some of the best actors alive. If you give this film thepatience and concentration is deserves, you will be rewarded, and you’ll onlywant to take another trip into le Carre’s dark little world.
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is availableeverywhere on DVD and Blu-Ray.