Focus Features
We are not currently in an age of patient college-aged moviegoers and I want to come right out and put that at the forefront of everyone’s mind for the remainder of this review.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy focuses on sleuth George Smiley (Gary Oldman), who has been 86’d from his agency, known as “the Circus”, following a botched operation in Budapest in which one of the agency’s own was shot down. Smiley is called back to the Circus to uncover a high-level mole within the agency, something first proposed by Smiley’s boss, known as Control (John Hurt), who was also forced into retirement after Budapest and has since died of a heart attack.
Smiley begins his investigation by gathering information from different sources and connecting them with pieces from his own memories. All the while, he begins to play around with his own intellect until he understands the truth hidden away inside the Circus.
The film is the theatrical imagining of the 1973 book of the same name, written by a man who was actually involved in the spy game for a living. Therefore, you can see that Tinker Tailor doesn’t commit so much to the traditional style of spy movies, which includes large, random explosions, and Scientologists defying the work of noted physicists and instead focuses on the seldom-used genre of “realistic” spy movies.
This latter style concerns itself with men looking and talking to each other with a quiet intensity while paranoia, smoke and lots of booze sift through the air (seriously, if you want to become a spy, be sure to Wikipedia “highball”).
Throughout his investigation, Smiley comes into contact with the new management of the Circus, one of which Control had suspected as the mole and each of which has an interestingly badass nickname (cause spy rings are basically like fraternities). “Tinker” is Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), “Tailor” is Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), “Soldier” is Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), “Poor Man” is Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) and “Beggarman” is Smiley. If the title confuses you, “spy” is reserved for the trait
The cast is perfectly set for the film’s stoic flow and calmly placed paranoia, but it’s Goldman who stands the tallest. For the first twenty minutes or so that you see George Smiley, he doesn’t say a single word, and is all the more intriguing for it. Goldman has the ability to thrill an audience just by looking at them kinda funny, and that skill isn’t lost in this role where his ability for an intellectual intensity has lots of room to breathe. When Smiley does talk, however, pretty much everything he says feels like cinematic gold.
The film itself starts off slowly and without a strong narrative pull, but once Smiley gets down to business you can feel a giant slap of tension cover the screen and become very invested in the outcome of Smiley’s investigation and all that goes with it. The look and feel of the film throughout is perfect for the spy genre: things are cold, there isn’t much brightness, and there always seems to be this uneasy stillness in the air.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a movie that most definitely requires the patience of an old man just killing time before his next big bird feeding. This isn’t to say the movie is boring or in any way bad, but anyone going to see it should be prepared for the very slow, relatively confusing, first hour or so. After that hour, though, be prepared to have your eyes glued to the large movie screen and for your popcorn eating to be as mindless as ever as you’ll be too entranced to eat like civilization exists.
