Technically brilliant but sadly patchy adaptation of a classic spy tale

Rating: 6/10 (15 May 2015)

John le Carre's spy story TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is one of the greatest spy tales ever told. It traces the search for a Russian spy within the British Secret Service, and exposes the cynicism and emptiness that forms a part of a spy's life. It was magnificently adapted into a TV series in the 1970s, and it was adapted into a feature film in 2011, with sadly a little less success.
Technically, the film is brilliant. It took six months to edit the film together into a stunning presentation; it's filled with flashbacks, long pan/zoom shots, and montages that present the impression of a puzzle seen through a scope, from which the viewers must look in and work out the truth at the heart of the events (and even then they won't get the full story). The production design and cinematography looks suitably bleak and cramped, recreating the wintry feel of Cold War London.
The cast play characters who betray and are betrayed, in various ways and levels. Gary Oldman is a standout as the restrained mild- mannered protagonist George Smiley, and he leads a cast of veteran actors – Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Mark Strong and David Dencik, among others – who do well in the roles they are assigned. If you've read le Carre's novel there isn't anything too special except for Oldman and Cumberbatch, whose roles are slightly different than expected (Smiley is more emotional, while Guillam is a homosexual), which lends depth to their performances.
Sadly, the film falls short where the story is concerned. The story simply needs more than two hours to be told in an appropriate manner; for a TV series this worked out fine, but for a feature film a lot of things had to be compressed, shifted and cut out for the sake of running time, and it overall leaves the story in a sadly patchy, watered-down version of what it used to be and should be. This adaptation has less suspense, is more complicated (at least for those who don't get the story) and feels more hopeless and futile than the book and TV series (which at least presented a ray of hope for things getting better).
The film is great as a period piece, and forms a technically superb work, successfully capturing the cynical and bleak times of the Cold War. But story-wise, the tale is sadly as bleak and disappointing as the film's setting. It's good for a watch once in a while, but viewers are better off watching the TV series.