Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy Reviews

Warning: Spoilers
Ever since I first heard of this Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, I knew I wanted to see it. Primarily because of the cast, with Gary Oldman and John Hurt two of the best underrated actors today, Colin Firth a vast majority of the time delivering solid to marvellous work, Mark Strong who impresses me more and more every time I see him and Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch two of the most promising young stars working now.

Another point of interest is its source material and the 1979 version. At first, I did find the book somewhat a slow-burner and not to easy to get into. On repeat readings however, I do find it a compelling and very interesting piece of work. I had heard much about the 1979 version, and when I saw it I was more than impressed. It was tense, involving, I connected to the characters and Alec Guinness' performance in it for me was one of his most memorable and iconic of his very great career.

About this Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy it did have a lot to live up to, considering how great the book and the Alec Guinness version were. And I think it succeeds, it admirably condenses a very difficult book which I imagine is a daunting task, and does extremely well on its own merits too(which is how I will judge the film). At first, like the book it is a slow-burner to start with, but once the tension rises, the story gets going and more characters introduced the film becomes more absorbing. The ending I agree was a little rushed, but I personally didn't find it too convoluted.

I did find that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was very well made. The period recreation was wonderfully evoked, and even better than that it was authentic. The cinematography was also impressive, perhaps grainy, but it did suit the gritty, menacing tone of the film and atmosphere very well. The music is electrifying, it does play a subtle part in some scenes but also adds to any scene that is tense or shocking. The direction consistently is assured and don't fall into the trap of being too artsy.

The script is thoughtful and has the basic feel of the prose of the book. The story as I have said is slow to start with, and it is a good idea for those who haven't read the book or seen the 1979 version to have a good enough idea of it before watching, but the number of shocking scenes such as the killing of Hardy's love interest and Firth's character's demise and the atmosphere throughout kept me interested and thrilled. Also the part where Ciaron Hinds' character hums the George Formby song, it was terrifying in a way that they'd been listening in but Cumberbatch's face was a picture! The pace is solid, alive to nuances and doesn't plod so much as for me to call it dull or something like that.

Characterisation wise, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn't as good as the 1979 version or the book even, but in many ways I can understand. The 1979 version did have more time and room to delve more into the characters. That said, I do commend the film in doing what it could to make the characters interesting and perhaps complex and I think any "slow" pacing helped with this rather than hindered it. I also loved that the emotion in this film is very under the surface rather than hard hitting. The acting is excellent.

Gary Oldman is superb, George Smiley is perhaps one of his more subtler performances, but nonetheless it is still commanding and one of my personal favourite performances of his. Of the support cast, the standouts are Tom Hardy, whose character apart from Smiley was the film's most interesting, and Mark Strong whose charisma and intensity still captivates. Benedict Cumberbatch I initially wasn't sure about in regard to age, but the acting was so great I forgot about any worries. Colin Firth gives his usual solid performance, Toby Jones also excels and Kathy Burke does well in a hard role. John Hurt gives his all into what he's got, which goes to show how good an actor he is, he's got some good lines and excellent delivery but the character isn't as developed well or as natural as the rest.

Overall, a very interesting and well done movie. It was one of my most anticipated movies of the year, and it ended up being one of my favourites too, which is saying a lot seeing how hit-and-miss so far 2011 has been for movies. 9/10 Bethany Cox

I found it gripping, relished the slow building of paranoid, oppressive and mysterious atmosphere, and it also highlights the dark side of the British private school system, gateway to elite clubs. With such shady characters, tense rivalries and violence, neither side of the cold war comes out with credit. Oldman and the cast as a whole are excellent, the settings and sense of the time very effectively handled.

Following the success of ‘Let the right one in’, Tomas Alfredson became a hot item on the international scene. For his following effort, he was set to direct his first English speaking feature and it was a really prestigious production with an all star British cast. Under such circumstances, there was huge buzz around this flick and many thought it would be one of the biggest critical hits in 2011. Eventually, even though it was indeed well received, it wasn’t a huge success and I thought myself that it was indeed rather disappointing. I mean, don’t misunderstand me, it was a good movie, it was very well directed, there was a great mood and feeling for the time period and the cast was great. So, everything was set to provide an amazing realistic old fashioned spy flick but it never achieved its great potential mainly to a rather murky plot. Indeed, even though the set-up was pretty simple (they look for a mole inside the MI5), the execution was overly cumbersome and I’m not sure I really managed to follow the whole thing. Eventually, at the end, of course, you discover who was the traitor but, honestly, it could have been another one of those suspects, it wouldn’t have made a difference. To conclude, even though it was slightly disappointing, it still remain a solid spy feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

A deliberate, steadily-paced film that gives you just enough time to figure out the last clue before revealing yet another in George Smiley’s (Oldman) maddening search for a mole within MI5. Tomas Alfredson’s paranoid spy drama is soaked in lingo, leaving you puzzled as Smiley must have been. The gift here, alongside the already stellar ensemble cast, is the fine actor of Gary Oldman, who silently communicates with us, helping us piece it all together. He comes off as a brilliant man, thorough and subtle—completely committed to his profession of finding truth through the lies. You may want to come prepared, but I enjoyed having to work a little bit to figure out who the mole was alongside Oldman—it certainly helped gain a closer perspective of how it must feel to be in such situations with literally no one to trust and other people’s lives at stake. If you’ve got any envy for that, you may lose it after seeing this film.

It’s a beautifully done film from a technical standpoint, and I normally don’t mind slowly moving, cerebral-minded films, but there was something about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy that almost put me to sleep multiple times. I left the theater thinking of it as very expensive Ambien, although nowhere near as bad as The Iron Lady, which was much shorter and felt far more laborious to get through.

I will say this about it, while I couldn’t get into the film’s particular groove, I did appreciate all of the technical aspects about it. The cinematography is absolutely stunning. The de-saturated colors give the film an anemic, withdrawn, and carefully modulated tone, which is utterly appropriate for the material. Hair and makeup are expertly done. Mark Strong’s balding comb-over looks incredibly convincing, and Tom Hardy’s frosted and feathered blonde hair makes him look like all of those 70s-era boy toy pin-ups. The costumes are incredibly accurate to the time period and add to the overall impression. And each of the performances are carefully controlled, but are still fine examples of pyrotechnic acting. Gary Oldman, who in any other year would have been the frontrunner for the Oscar, in particular is just incredible. The way he uses his glasses as shields from everything, the way that he tries to blend himself into the wall, it’s all so perfectly chosen for a character who requires anonymity and the ability to blend in to effectively get the job done.

Perhaps it’s the way that the plot slowly unfolds, but if you use the old theory that the biggest named guest star in a TV show is inevitably the killer, then figuring out the grand mystery at the heart of the film doesn’t take much work. Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for a meditative spy film. Or maybe I hyped myself up too much and the film couldn’t live up to the promise in my head. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is very good, but also incredibly dull. Maybe a second look will change my mind, but it will be a while before I come back around to it.

"There's a mole, right at the top of the Circus. And he's been there for years."

A rare type of modern spy thriller, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is more interested in looks, pauses and intricate story machinations than guns and explosions. Mainstream audiences need not apply; this is the type of picture best consumed by more mature filmgoers who possess the sort of patience and attention that viewers can rarely be relied upon to bring to a cinema these days. However, despite gorgeous visuals, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy proceeds through its knotted scheme of espionage and secrets with a sense of utmost perplexity, ensuring you'll never be certain about what's happening even if you're able to grapple with the events and stakes of isolated set-pieces. It's intelligent and complex yet at times dramatically dry and detached.

When British Intelligence commander Control (Hurt) learns that a Hungarian general is willing to sell classified information, agent Jim Prideaux (Strong) is dispatched to Budapest to investigate. Prideaux is promptly shot, though, and, in the aftermath, Control is forced into retirement. In ensuing months, word reaches civil servant Oliver Lacon (McBurney) that there's a long-term mole in the "Circus" (i.e. the British Intelligence agency). To investigate, he pulls George Smiley (Oldman) out of forced retirement. As Smiley monitors the actions of the Circus' top men, he finds a reliable man in Peter Guillam (Cumberbatch), and becomes intertwined with fringe player Ricki Tarr (Hardy) who has valuable information about the mole that he'll trade for protection.

John le Carré's labyrinthine source novel of the same name has been adapted before. In 1979, an acclaimed BBC miniseries based on the novel was produced, which had the luxury of 7 episodes and over 350 minutes of screen-time to sort through the intricate arrangement of scrutiny and suspicions. For 2011's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, on the other hand, screenwriters Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor had to compress the narrative complexities into a 120-minute timeframe. The resulting picture is successful in capturing the novel's spirit and sense of paranoia, yet it's too truncated and difficult to follow (there are even poorly-delineated jumps in the timeline), leaving us with little to do but try to absorb the dialogue as we endeavour to grasp the bigger picture beyond the intricacies of individual scenes. It's laudable for filmmakers in the 21st Century to handle a conventional plot in an unconventional fashion, yet only occasionally does the material's density translate to enthralling cinema - it often lacks the sense of tension and emotional attachment that's pivotal to entice viewers to decode all of the sophistication. Ultimately, what we're left with is a few riveting vignettes and a few tedious segments which have not been effectively tied together to produce something overly rewarding.

Director Tomas Alfredson emerged on critics' radars with his Swedish masterpiece Let the Right One In back in 2008. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is Alfredson's English-language debut, and it's an immaculately-detailed, atmospheric piece of work that effortlessly summons the time and place of Europe in the 1970s. This is the type of motion picture which primarily concerns itself with mood and character, resulting in a true "slice of life" depiction of this era, as if Alfredson and his crew got in a time capsule and filmed actual secret agents at work. Yet, the movie still feels a bit too dry and impassive. Finding out the identity of the mole does not carry as much urgency as it should have, nor does it provide much momentum. It's all a bit blah. While Alfredson may have been an ideal choice in theory to helm the film, perhaps the director's inexperience in English-language features is to blame for the picture's occasional desiccation.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's largest asset is easily the cast, which contains a handful of renowned British actors. Leading the pack is Gary Oldman, whose reserved but confident demeanour is an ideal fit for George Smiley. Oldman constantly submits top-notch work, yet his performance here easily ranks as one of his best; he disappears into the role of Smiley and makes us believe every utterance. Meanwhile, Colin Firth (who was recently awarded a well-earned Oscar for The King's Speech) is excellent, conveying a myriad of internal nuances with aplomb (aspects of his work are ripe for interpretation). Also terrific are Tom Hardy (Warrior) and Benedict Cumberbatch (BBC's Sherlock) as Ricki Tarr and Peter Guillam (respectively). In supporting roles you'll also find John Hurt, Mark Strong, Toby Jones, David Dencik, Ciarán Hinds, Stephen Graham and Simon McBurney, who do their utmost to try and maintain our interest during the convoluted narrative. The acting across the board is sublime.

Admittedly, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy does improve on repeat viewings, as you'll have the chance to decipher the film's intricacies with the story's ultimate trajectory at the back of your mind. Like most Oscar bait, this is a film which is happy to be appreciated rather than enjoyed. It's not that Alfredson and co. should have dumbed down the source material to include guns and action; it's that viewers are asked to do too much homework to compensate for the massive narrative condensation.

6.5/10

I went emotional when I heard the name of Gary Oldman being mentioned as nomination for Best Actor, for the wonderful role he played in this great spy-film. It is slow and builds up panic and thrill around you. Sometime you feel that spy agencies could be this vulnerable to other penetrating agencies, planting in their moles. I like the cinematography work on the film, director Tomas Alfredson has taken up great deal of attention to master the set-designs on the film. A must watch film from 2011.

First of all, before watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy it’s important to know that it is not the James Bond-like spy film that features gun fights, car chases and a lot of violent physical contact. Nevertheless, it is unlike any other espionage film that you could possibly see as it takes you on a more theoretical journey into complex investigations and problem solving. Although spy films are not the most favoured sub-genre that everybody will enjoy, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is neither one of the best nor worst spy films that there has been as it provides positive qualities and negative flaws on equal fronts.


Having said that Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is unlike many other espionage films such as the James Bond, Jason Bourne and Mission: Impossible franchises, there are a few certain faults that the film consists of that could make its viewers slightly lose interest. For example, reading the synopsis doesn’t seem too difficult to understand but when you’re actually watching the film and as it goes into specific detail, it becomes rather complex and can occasionally exhaust the audience by gradually making them feel a bit lost by it. So, as a result of this, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy really is a film that needs to be watched more than once to gain a full and clear understanding of the story or to just simply read the novel and watch the 1979 television series.


Although finding the complex and rather slow dialogue was the only major problem, the direction and filming side of production was just superb! From the director of Swedish horror film, Let The Right One In, Tomas Alfredson goes somewhere different as it becomes his very first English language film. Time and time again, we see this ‘whodunit’ style thrillers resulting in plot twists and dark background stories but Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy expresses the dark yet rather clean settings of the film demonstrating life in the 1970s and during the Cold War. Despite the style of filming, Alfredson just lacked expressing that realistic feeling you get when trying to feel attached to the characters, so he may be able to do a lot better but he can do a lot worse than this.


Let’s all be perfectly honest about this: Gary Oldman is undoubtedly one of the most underrated actors of all time who has delivered some fantastic performances and has appeared in a lot of blockbusters over the years. His performance in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was absolutely brilliant as George Smiley which could result in him finally gaining him a long-awaited Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actor. One who has watched the TV series would have found it a rather difficult task to be able to surpass what the late Alec Guinness managed to bring forth to the character, but considering that I’ve not watched the series; Gary Oldman is the one who could’ve surpassed Guinness. Recent Academy Award winning actor Colin Firth (The King’s Speech) makes his mark and delivers a good performance as Deputy Chief of the Circus, Bill Haydon. Other strong additions to the cast are uprising young actors Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch who together add a bit of youth alongside the older and more experienced actors. Mark Strong makes a very crucial appearance as Jim Prideaux in the powerful prologue of the film and within the rather sudden flashbacks that constantly kept appearing at the most unexpected times.


Overall, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is neither a fantastic film that is one of the greatest of its genre as well as of 2011, nor one of the worst either. Gary Oldman deserved the critical acclaim that he received and is accompanied by a strong ensemble cast that saves the film. I wouldn’t go as far as to call the story a ‘mess’ but there are many ways where it could have been a lot easier to understand and could have been better.

''We are not so very different, you and I. We've both spent our lives looking for the weaknesses in one another.''

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.

Gary Oldman: George Smiley

Tinker. Tailor. Soldier. Spy. John le Carré's spy thriller comes alive on the screen, given the professional capacity and swift brush stroke required, from director Tomas Alfredson. The casting is a revelation resulting in acting worthy for recognition in any film festival or award ceremony. Who could portray the character George Smiley, echo and honour the original Alec Guiness performance, and completely morph himself into the character; Obviously it has to be only one: The chameleon and legendary Gary Oldman.



Imagine history coming alive on the big screen, a film which graces an age of espionage which relives and retreads the days of the cold war. Secrets, mysteries, and corruption within our own hierarchy that is MI6.
Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, David Dencik all give electric turns as the puppeteers pulling strings. They make us wonder, who can we trust? If anyone.

The complexities of the story and the to-the-point dialogue shroud the audience in a meticulous cage of ambivalence. This is a very dark time. An uncertain time. Mark Strong shows how his character Jim Prideaux can fall victim to betrayal and how personal feelings can never triumph over doing your duty.
John le Carré's The Constant Gardner adaptation on the big screen screamed twists, turns and a web of deceit from a corrupt corporation and pharmaceutical short cuts. With Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy we see the same style of storytelling which keeps us hooked from start to finish because while we watch we do our best to keep a few steps ahead, and more often than not, fail miserably.

There is a sequence, a sort of dream-like montage which in my mind sums up the cold war and the level of confusion. We have a Lenin dressed Santa Claus, (a paradoxical stab at communism meeting consumerism) and all the MI6 staff are singing the Soviet anthem. We see John Hurt, one of the top men, bewildered at times from paranoia. George Smiley emotionally detached and cocooned, even to the point he is aware of an affair regarding his wife and a colleague. The thing about George Smiley, he knows when to act and he knows in this time how to wait. The montage shows the agony of such waiting. A chilling portrait of the cold war period and also a reflection regarding the psyche of our protagonist. The duality is present in the characters as well as the environments they inhabit.
The younger actors hold their ground amongst the other titans: Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy show they can act and deliver as well as anyone. They have the energy and charisma required.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is one of the film masterpieces to come out this year filmed with dizzying precision and care. It is a rendering and journey into a world of secrets, espionage, betrayal, murder, and stasis. Those who have the patience required and the intellectual appreciation for such a journey will devour this adaptation and be bewitched by an Oscar worthy performance from Gary Oldman who completely transforms into the enigmatic George Smiley.
This film is definitely one for repeated viewings because it has so much to offer, so much for audiences to process, and so many twists and turns that looking away could result in missing a detail which made all the difference to your understanding.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy shows how derisively hot the cold war could be and it deserves your attention on the premise that you will learn as well as be entertained by such a complex story with electrifying performances.

''Things aren't always what they seem.''

Incredibly well crafted, brilliantly suspensful thriller based on the book by John Le Carre. Containing many many fine performances; in particular the underated Gary Oldman, who no doubt will be Oscar nominated. Othe potentialr nominees I suspect could include; Colin Firth, John Hurt and possibly even Benedict Cumberbatch. Expertly directed and wonderfully put together and one of the rare selection of films which appreciates its audience. Highly recomended and a modern masterpiece of the 10's. No doubt will sweep the board in the 2012 BAFTAS and OSCARS. No doubt Alfredson has the Oscar in the bag! See it now.