Director: Tomas Alfredson
Writers: John le Carré (novel), Peter Straughan (screenplay), and Bridgit O’Connor
Stars: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong
Beige, drab, muggy, uneasy, prickly....brilliant. Essentially a masterpiece, but with such dense plotting, there's little time to fully sketch anyone, and the 'whodunnit' revelation fails to inject enough excitement. Oldman's portrayal of the cooly calculating Smiley, one would suspect, will garner an Oscar nomination, but the collective cast are all solemnly on-song.
It's the 1970s, the war is Cold and rain-drenched London is decaying. George Smiley (Gary Oldman) is re-hired by British intelligence to flush out a suspected duplicitous character from the circus (the top echelon of MI6).
A broody atmosphere envelops the film's mood and never relents (a replication in form then, of Alfredson's masterful Let the Right One In). For all its slow-burning moments, there's a nice stock of palm-sweaters (Mark Strong's agent suspecting something is not right in Budapest; Benedict Cumberbatch's Peter Guillam in a classic espionage scene-staple in the records' room). The cream of Britain (males only!) too is on show, from the old masters (Hurt, Oldman and Firth) to cinema's fastest rising star (Hardy).
Verdict: Imperious filmmaking. Oscars 2012: are the British coming again?
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