Curate's Egg

Rating: 5/10 (31 August 2012)

I can only recommend 1- read the book 2 - view the BBC series with Alec Guinness. Gary Oldman and John Hurt stand out but I was surprised to see that the budget was 20M. Obviously not spent on the script since very few people got to say anything and it looked like a made for TV movie in its set pieces. This is one of the seminal espionage stories so why mess with the details. Ricky Tarr's story was altered and none of the major suspects in the book were given any voice in the film. Characters were not developed properly - what a wasted opportunity. No sense of the betrayal of friendship which is what the book is about and no sense of the humanity, frailty and intelligence which pervades the book. Disappointing all in all.