Miscast and misdirected

Rating: 4/10 (15 December 2011)

*** This review may contain spoilers ***
I've read the book and seen the series, which might be a drawback in appreciating this version. But there were so many things wrong with it that made it a huge disappointment:
1. As others have noted, Benedict Cumberbatch was at least a decade too young to play Guillam and lacked a certain thuggishness that made his attempts to play that role look forced. To my American eyes he looked more like a clerk behind the counter at a Starbucks.
2. Toby Jones likewise was all wrong as Percy Alleline: too timid, too awkward and (pardon me) too short to be a bureaucratic intriguer. And, while I did not travel in those circles in the early 70s (or at any other time), I would have assumed that a functionary would have suppressed his Scottish accent in favor of something more Oxbridgean. Jones looked like he was trying out for the role of Yezhov in some other movie.
3. Colin Firth cannot compete with Ian Richardson, who evoked Kim Philby just by his looks and manner; Firth would have done better as Guy Burgess. Richardson gave us a layered performance; Firth's was completely forgettable.
4. Ciarán Hinds did not look remotely like a leftish academic. And, yes, I know that we don't have to stereotype every character by physical appearance, but can we at least make some sort of bow toward the characters in the book? At any rate, as far as the movie was concerned he might as well have been a piece of furniture.
5. The violence (or, more accurately, the graphic display of torn human flesh and blood that represented violence that had taken place off screen) was not merely gratuitous, but tacky. It only underscored the fact that the director had no handle on the narrative and used these showpieces to substitute for what the series emphasized--what the characters did not know or knew but did not tell.
6. Those tears in that scene nearly at the end of the movie.
The series was engrossing, the movie was boring,