Lots of brilliant work here, but over-compressed

Rating: 7/10 (9 April 2012)

There is lots of brilliant work going on in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Gary Oldman's George Smiley is amazing: quiet, unassuming, world-weary, but totally committed and devastatingly methodical once he gets going. The rest of a very strong cast puts in impressive turns as well: John Hurt is perfect as paranoid old-guard man Control, Colin Firth is memorably smarmy in the role of Bill Haydon, and Toby Jones' Percy Alleline is the picture of a man promoted beyond his competence, full of bluster and low cunning. There are some great structural ideas in the direction, too, like the central flashback scene in the movie, a Christmas party that gradually spools out revealing interactions amongst the characters as the "present"-day story progresses. And the reconstruction of the styles and colours and sensibility of the early Seventies is flawless.
Tinker Tailor is of course a cerebral thriller rather than an actioner, a premise which is embedded in the source material; in an age overflowing with brainless high-volume shoot-'em-ups, we need more of this, and I hope George Smiley comes back for more big-screen adventures.
Having said all that, Tinker Tailor does suffer from a serious problem: over-compression. The original story was sprawling and would always be hard to fit into a feature film, but Tinker Tailor compresses its material so radically that -- while everything you need to know what's happening in a given shot is *technically* there on the screen -- in practice, no amount of laser-like concentration is going to keep you from missing at least a quarter of it on a first viewing. The story moves in laconic, abrupt cuts back and forth in time and place, uses the barest minimum of action to tell its story, and is so reticent about signposting what is happening that I found myself very confused more than once, particularly in the early going. Eventually it becomes easier to sort out what's a flashback and what isn't, and the pieces start to fall into place, but even so it took me multiple viewings to be clear about everything that was going on. That shouldn't be necessary. (This compression, mind you, also leads to some very impressive touches of filmmaking economy, like the establishing shot in the Bill Roach - Jim Prideaux storyline where we see Jim pulling up to his job as a schoolteacher reflected in Bill's glasses. On the whole, though, there's too much of it, and one can't help wondering if an extra thirty minutes of footage would have been out of the question.)
For those of us not watching on high-def plasma screens, the other problem with Tinker Tailor is that it's dark. As in, much of the cinematography is just... dark. It's hard to see things. I had to adjust the picture on my television way out of whack for normal viewing just to get everything in the movie visible.
Having said that, overall Tinker Tailor is a fine film of a type that needs to become more prominent. Hopefully its flaws won't overcome its potential importance.