A European art-house film shoehorned into a British spy adaptation of a best-selling novel

Rating: 4/10 (7 February 2012)

Well...where to begin? I eagerly anticipated watching this film, having read the book and being old enough to remember the Alec Guinness portrayal of George Smiley on the BBC in the late 70s and having listened to John Le Carre (not his real name) being interviewed.
However...
Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear. The plot is not really that complex, so no excuses for dragging it out unless you can hold the audience's attention: mine lapsed a number of times and I felt that all I was doing was making coffee and watching the DVD timecode. It felt like it was directed by the same man who made the third of the Swedish-made Dragon Tattoo films, which is a truly Scandinavian experience on the same proportions as watching a washing machine spin its cycle for 2 hours.
So - back to the story - there's a mole at the top and he needs to be rooted out. Only Smiley (a wonderful name for a non-smiler) can do the rooting, helped and hindered by HMG. Each of the 'middle-aged' characters (Firth, Oldman etc) codenamed Tinker, Tailor etc is as well- developed character-wise as the little paper headshots taped to their chess-pieces. Gary Oldman was just too enigmatic for me. I quite liked the way he moved so slowly, but then he seemed to be playing someone much older than himself, so it sort of worked.
John Hurt, as 'Control', plays himself very well. Tom Hardy and Benedict Cumberbatch seem like they're both itching for a bit more action, as if the director's holding them both back. I like Kathy Burke's fleeting role (basically one scene) but she, like Colin Firth, was grossly under-used.
Too much of this was filmed in isolation:two people talking. Then one staring. Then two talking. I feel that a more unified approach to the story and the film-makers would have been beneficial. I did, regrettably, feel that the real story was going on somewhere else.
So: it's probably worth a watch, but only if you prepare yourself. Perhaps my expectations were too high.