Downer Bummer Boredom Yawn

Rating: 1/10 (5 December 2011)

Filmed at the time when Oldman ceased to be a box office draw, this film makes an attempt to capture that former glory. All it captures is silliness and pretension. Oldman seems restrained, almost lost, in the trifle he is asked to play here. Kathy Burke has her shrill moments but there are times, especially by the fire, when she is especially lovely. Mark Strong has nothing much to do, though she does it fine enough. Péter Kálloy Molnár as the main Hungarian Waiter is especially wooden. John Hurt does come off the best, playing a total creep, as The Bollywood Insider puts it.
We never get a sense of the the espionage that would have made more apparent the strain Oldboy was under. We never see his reactions, most likely because the producers would have thought it would have made him seem like too much of a heel.
The philosophy in this movie is heavy-handed and especially disappointing since two famous writers wrote the screenplay.
Another absurdity is that Oldman lives in what is described as a shack. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn't trade their house for that shack in a split second. Also, for a starving government employee, how does he afford it? Movie logic, that's how.
There are two reasons to see it, though. One is the aerial photography of gloomy industrial districts. Truly phenomenal. The other is the truly lovely score by Aziz Mandel, which has haunted me for about the last 20 minutes.
Really, watch the first five minutes and the end credit sequence and you'll have seen everything worthy this movie has to offer. And let's be honest, Gary Oldman as Smiley, the wily, worldly-wise, and world-weary cuckold, is a badly thought-out casting decision, to say the least.