Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: A Convoluted Game

By Horacio Garcia

Putting a story so complicated as the one in John Le Carre's classic espionage novel in a couple hours of condensed drama is one major task. Not for nothing BBC's version from 1979 is in seven parts and even then sometimes is difficult to follow the plot. So is natural that the film adaptation directed by Thomas Alfredson turns out to be the kind of movie that deserves our time and concentration.

Alfredson is the Swedish director of the brilliant and disturbing Let the Right One In, by far the best vampire movie of the decade, and he brought with him photographer Van Hoytema, who manages to capture the grey slowness of the early 70's very well. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is sometimes a very European movie, with that exasperating pace despite a pretty jumpy beginning.

Like most of the best Le Carre's works Tinker is a Cold War story but Alfredson doesn't involves himself in the great geopolitics of the time the way it happens in the original book and series; his Cold War is contemporary and personal, a timeless and current affair.

The action begins in London, where Control, the head of British Intelligence (played by John Hurt) sends Agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to Budapest to talk a Hungarian general into defecting. The mission rapidly goes awry for Prideaux and he has to flee followed by Soviet intelligence that finally shots him in the back. The aftermath of the operation is a political backslash that forces Control into retirement along with his right hand; George Smiley. In the last moment, Control realizes that there have to be a mole inside the upper echelon of the British Intelligence Service, familiarly known as The Circus.

After the shakeout, The Circus is controlled by a quartet of burocrats lead by Percy Alleline (Toby Jones) who got his promotion thanks to Operation Witchcraft, a high level source of information inside the Soviet Intelligence. Control, who is already ill, dies shortly after but in a funny turn of events, the civil officer that oversights The Circus calls George Smiley back from retirement because there is rumors of a "mole" in The Circus.

It was a brilliant move by the producers of Tinker to give the main character to Gary Oldman. Oldman in his younger years had a thing for oversized, very intense characters, but now that he's older, he's cultivating a low key style that was perfect for his Smiley. Of course he had a lot of practice playing the quiet Cpt. James Gordon in the Batman franchise.

Anyway, Oldman gets a lot of help from a magnificent cast, which includes Colin Firth, fresh from his Oscar last year, Ciaran Hinds and the excellent Benedict Cumberbatch, the actor from the latest British TV version of Sherlock Holmes.

A very cerebral movie, Tinker is sometimes a little cold, but the overall impression that produces is one of satisfaction with the elegant way in which the mystery is solved: an honestly displayed, well-acted puzzle.

Tags blogger: Horacio Garcia, Colin Firth, Gary Oldman, John Le Carre, soldier, Spy, Tailor, Thomas Alfredson, Tinker