Not for newcomers

Rating: 6/10 (7 December 2012)

I suspect that if you've read the novel, or seen the mini series, then Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a thoroughly enjoyable watch. For my sins, I have not, so my review is from that perspective.
I'll admit that knowing the plot outline of George Smiley needing to root out the mole from four suspects, and seeing Firth, Strong, Cumberbatch and Hardy on the cast list, I was excited. It's possible that my assumption that there was correlation in the fours was part of my issue. However I don't think so. Perhaps the characters played by Hardy and Strong are the most charismatic, or have the most interesting story in the original source material. However when squeezing it all into a two hour movie, you need to reduce things to the bare bones. Ultimately from that respect, this movie spent far too much time concentrating on two characters who weren't really that relevant to the main plot. The result was that we had very little screen time with the suspects and were given little opportunity to join in with George on his investigation.
In the end, due to the way the story was cut down for the movie, it played out that two very simple steps from George revealed the culprit. Steps which he actually could have taken right at the start of his investigation.
The acting was superb as you would expect (Oldman's subtle performance against type was particularly impressive), and the sense of time and place at the height of the cold war was captured perfectly. Ultimately though, this came across too much like a film solely for existing fans of the book. And to be honest, what's the point of that?