Reviewed
by Lamar Kukuk
1/9/12
A famous
novel as source material can be a blessing and a curse for a movie:
you get the great story for which the novel is famous, but you’re also
required to maintain aspects of its structure that may not suit the cinematic
medium. Such is the double-edged sword Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
holds: this adaptation of John le Carre’s iconic 1974 novel tells
a great spy story and is filled with characters that allow an all-star
cast of quality English thespians to do some really great work. However,
it’s also hamstrung by le Carre’s structural choice to hit the ground running
and only let you know who these characters and their world are as you meet
them. It was, after all, the 4th novel to feature master MI-6 spy
George Smiley, so you could get away with that a little more readily than
Tomas Alfredson’s film adaptation. Because it’s about a realistic
spy world where people have meetings, file reports and work in offices
not so different than the ones in which we all labor, Spy’s pace
can be described as somewhere on the glacial side of deliberate in the
time it takes the viewer to get his bearings. Once all its pieces
are on the chessboard, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy builds steadily
to a strong and engaging climax. But it can be argued that you wouldn’t
have missed much if you walked in on the movie when it was half over.
It’s
the height of the Cold War: MI-6 agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong)
takes a fateful meeting in Hungary that ends with him shot and presumed
dead. Back at the British Intelligence Service (whose agents call
it “The Circus”), Control (John Hurt) takes the fall and his right-hand
George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is forced to depart as well. Soon enough,
Intelligence overseer Oliver Lacon (Simon McBurney) contacts Smiley and
asks that he conduct an external investigation into Control’s belief that
a Russian mole has infiltrated the agency and reached its highest levels.
Smiley asks for a couple of assistants, most notably Agent Peter Guillam
(Benedict Cumberbatch), who becomes his eyes and ears inside The Circus
and begins to piece together the events of the last few years from this
new perspective. There used to be six people at The Circus’ highest
level meetings: now there are four: ambitious Percy Alleline
(Toby Jones) is now in charge thanks in no small part to his Operation
Witchcraft, which is using a secret safehouse somewhere in London to get
information from a mole buried deep in the KGB. Then there’s his
right-hand Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), the only other man with knowledge
of Witchcraft’s identity, Toby Esterhase (David Denick), a close associate
of Control who turned on him after the Hungarian debacle, and Prideaux’
close friend Bill Haydon (Colin Firth). None of them know about Smiley’s
investigation, but they do have reason to want a missing agent who turns
up on George’s doorstep: Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy) has been in the field
for quite some time trying to persuade a Russian agent’s wife (Svetlana
Khodchenkova) to defect. She wanted to go, and offered a considerable
item in trade, a revelation Tarr calls “the Mother of All Secrets”.
But he was cut off at all turns until she was abducted by the Russians
and now is on the run from a Circus that insists he’s the one who turned.
The events that led to Smiley’s dismissal were not what they seemed, but
this much is true: one of the men Control assigned the call names
“Tinker” “Tailor” “Soldier” and “Poorman” is in fact working with the Russians
to blow a big enough hole in the West’s veil of secrecy to turn the tide
of the Cold War.
The
greatest achievement of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is that it replicates
not just the look of the 70’s, but the look and pace of 70’s movies to
an amazing degree. Alfredson and his team create a Circus that’s
ripe for betrayal from within because it’s more or less a floating office
party with really bad décor. The small slights, official bullying,
secret affairs and casual sexual harassment of office life loom far larger
here than any government secret, and Witchcraft, Percy’s perfect petty
triumph over the boss who’s Just So Mean to him at the office Christmas
Party is in fact a perfect cover for a double agent to ply his trade without
notice. And yes, while we wait to learn a little more about the plot
that imperils British Intelligence, Spy finds itself struggling
to overcome a fundamental problem: office life isn’t terribly cinematic,
and the conviction with which the movie’s fine cast replicates its quiet
drudgery gets the movie off to a very, very rocky start.
It’s
once Hardy arrives that things start to pick up: the puzzle’s pretty
hard to see before you get his pieces, and Ricki brings an energy that
his beaten-down superiors haven’t had for years. The more pieces
you put into that puzzle, the better the movie gets, and the closing scenes
are quite interesting. It’s really only in the last ten minutes or
so that enough connections have been made for the story to fire on all
cylinders, but it’s always better to see a movie that peaks late than one
that peaks early, and Tinker Tailor Solider Spy sent me out of the
theater satisfied, even as I remembered early scenes where I struggled
to pay attention enough to remember which famous British actor matched
which character name.
Oldman
is really good within the confines of the Smiley character: his pulse
never really quickens because he’s just seen too much and is the sort of
man who keeps taking his wife and his agency back no matter how often they
cheat on him. But he’s also the right tortoise to slowly and steadily
win the race against the mole, especially when the trail leads back to
an old Russian nemesis. Jones is right in his wheelhouse as Percy,
that one guy in every office who has nothing going on but stewing over
old slights and as such always seems to rise above the people who’re distracted
by the occasional joy. Strong gets to showcase a lot more depth than
his usual fiend and henchman roles allow, and he and Firth make the most
of a little screen time together. And Kathy Burke has a terrific
scene as a dismissed Circus employee who vacillates between knowing the
workplace she and Smiley shared was rotten to the core and wanting to believe
otherwise.
If
you know and love the book, I can imagine Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
being a more fulfilling viewing experience: it certainly takes its
sweet time luxuriating over tiny details that I sincerely hope mean something
to someone. Alfredson gets strong performances and isn’t afraid to
jar us with the occasional bit of extreme violence (check out those intestines
floating in the bathtub! Eeeeew!), but ultimately his movie is just
a little too good at depicting the drugerous side of the spy game
for its own good. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy ends with a bang
and I was glad I saw it, but that thing I said about coming in halfway
through… well, I wasn’t entirely kidding about that. |
