Dull and difficult to follow

Rating: 3/10 (5 March 2012)

I saw the critics reviews of this film and thought I should make the effort to watch it, even though I do find John le Carré a bit impenetrable. I think it is the job of a director to make the difficult approachable, and in this film, it seems to me exactly the opposite is achieved. The characters are never introduced or there relationships explained, and the plot is full of flash-backs which are often very short and have no distinguishing indicators (bring back the wavy lines?), so that the viewer can't grasp if we are in the present or the past. I found the first part of the film unbelievably dull, and gave up at the half way point, almost abandoning it. I did go back to it though, and found the last hour slightly more interesting, which I suppose is why I'm not giving the thing an even lower score. I didn't find any of the characters had any, well character, I never latched onto the story, and in the end, I didn't care. I suggest you read the synopsis and then skip through it to see what it looks like, otherwise you are wasting two hours you could have been watching reruns of the Muppets, or something else more useful.