Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the latest adaptation of the well loved John Le Carre novel of the same name, most people will be familiar with it as a TV series from the late seventies starring Edward Woodward as George Smiley. In this version the lead role is played by Gary Oldman, George is an old school spy who was in at the very beginning of the setting up of MI6 and he is being forced into retirement along with his boss Control, John Hurt, after a bungled operation in Hungary.
When it becomes apparent there is a mole in the high echelons of the new regime he is contracted by a shady under secretary to investigate and weed out the bad egg. To do this he enlists the assistance of Guillam, Benedict Cumberbatch, a young up and coming member and an old special branch colleague.
There investigation takes numerous twists and turns with the glitterati of british cinema all making an appearance along the way, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Tom Hardy and even Kathy Burke get a role in this atmospheric and nostalgic film about a long gone day of cold war.
I wont go into any detail with the story as its a thriller and it would spoil the very well measured suspense to give anything away before hand. suffice to say the story is a brilliantly crafted one by a true master of the genre and this film does it justice.
I felt quite nostalgic myself watching the old London skyline CGI’d into the background and the use of the Wimpy bar and other seventies main stays was excellent, they didnt miss a trick in the setting as even the phone boxes were on the money, not the old fifties type which would usually have been shipped in as a generic London landmark but the seventies ones with there very different style and equipment.
One the whole this film delivers a very strong set of performances and Oldman is Oscar tipped already which is fair enough, although he didnt say a word for the first ten minutes as things went on around him yet he was delivering dialogue nonetheless and this is a mark of a great performance in my mind.
The end is what you would have expected in a Le Carre novel and you are left puzzled by some of it but that just means you need to watch again to get all the information that was given but not necessarily taken in first time, I will be going again to ensure I got everything and would recommend everyone who like a good political/espionage thriller to go.
bigsteveg 