Stick with the Alec Guinness version.

Rating: 4/10 (8 January 2012)

I had such hopes for this movie.
When I heard that a big-screen version of John Le Carre's spy-thriller "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" was in the works, I had mixed feelings. The mini-series, which stars Alec Guinness as the British master of intelligence, George Smiley, was a benchmark in the espionage genre. It was a successful translation to the small screen of Le Carre's very cerebral, short-on-action novel. Alec Guinness nailed the Smiley character. It captured the tone of the story, the feeling of the period. A very hard act to follow.
But the buzz about the new movie version seemed to be good, and although the early reviews were mixed, there was enough good word for me to be hopeful. I went into the theater wanting to like this film, ready to be pleased.
Instead, I was disappointed. And, I have to say, I felt betrayed by some of the liberties taken with Le Carre's story. The fact that Le Carre himself is credited as an executive producer makes the sense of betrayal all the stronger.
Okay, so enough of my feelings: the movie. It's a return to the days when the Cold War with the Soviet Union and the satellite republics was a real and daily event, and everyone took the possibility of the east-west standoff igniting into something more devastating seriously. Constant vigilance, a game of watchers garnering information that the other side sought to hide, covert jockeying for position. This was back in the days when a wiretap or "bugging" with hidden microphones was sophisticated technological espionage.
The movie does successfully convey this atmosphere, but to some extent this is to its detriment: the movie is a "period piece," with ladies in 1960's fashions manually transcribing from reel-to-reel tape recorders and nary a computer to be seen; landline telephones of the correct period and fashions and hairstyles all looking unmistakably dated. When we're used to movies of the spy genre dripping with the latest technological gizmos and gadgets and everyone very much in the current style of dress and appearance, it's jarring to see.
The movie is also shot with a muted color palette, tones of grays and browns and blues predominating, which gives it a flatness that's unappealing to the eye.
The acting: well, nobody is going to touch Alec Guinness as George Smiley, but Gary Oldman is respectable in the role. In a way, my heart ached for him: this is a very nuanced role, playing a character who is the antithesis of active and animated. Oldman gets Smiley right and I can't fault him in the lead role.
But he's upstaged by John Hurt's portrayal of George Smiley's boss and predecessor, the head of the British intelligence, service, known only as Control. In the Le Carre story, Control is almost a cameo, a figure not fully fleshed out and seen mainly through the actions of others. John Hurt's characterization of Control is fully realized, three-dimensional, completely believable and alive. Oh how I wish the rest of the movie had been up to the standard that Hurt set! For the rest: Benedict Cumberbatch as Smiley's assistant Peter Guillam in the hunt for the "mole," the double-agent deeply buried in the hierarchy of the "Circus," as British Intelligence is referred to, does a good job with what he's given. However, there's a problem with what he's given. Somewhere in the translation of the book to the movie, a change was made in Guillam's character that is shocking to anyone who is familiar with the character from the books. Suffice it to say there's a point in the movie where you could tell which members of the audience had read the book and were familiar with Guillam's character, because you could hear audible gasps of shock and half-stifled protests.
And therein lies what I would say is the biggest problem this movie has: if you're familiar with the book and the mini-series with Alec Guinness, you're not going to like the liberties that have been taken with the story. So much so that you're probably going to "buy out" of the story and not like the movie at all.
If you're not familiar with the book, you're going to find the look of the movie stodgy and dull, and there really isn't a lot of action to what is essentially a very cerebral story. That means you're going to find yourself not caring about the movie or the characters enough to remain interested, and will probably find yourself wishing you'd gone to see the latest shiny glossy polished contemporary spy thriller, something like "Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol" or yearning to watch a re-run of one of the Bourne movies on cable.
I can't recommend this movie to people who are hard-core fans of Le Carre's book, because they aren't going to like the liberties taken with the story, especially with the Peter Guillam character. I can't recommend this movie to people who enjoy movies in the spy genre, because frankly when taken as a whole, it isn't very good.
If you're a fan of John Hurt and his work, I would suggest that you might enjoy the relatively brief time he's on screen. And if you have an academic interest in comparing Gary Oldman's characterization of George Smiley with Alec Guiness' characterization, you will appreciate the movie. But for anyone else, I would suggest that you wait until the movie comes out on cable and you can watch it without paying $10 per ticket to see it. Don't waste your money seeing it in the theater.
...But I can recommend that you get the DVD set of "Tinker, Tailor" with Alec Guinness as George Smiley. Stick with that and read the book; avoid this current version because I don't think you'll like it.