Brought down from the centre.

Rating: 2/10 (26 January 2012)

The credits say that this film is based on the John Le Carre book, but that is a lie - it is based on the 1979 television series. It attempts to capture the essential 'lowering' feel of that TV production and only succeeds in tedium. The camera work is excellent, exemplary even, but the mood is sour rather than bleak. The biggest detractor and the chief cause of the dullness is the central performance. The usually watchable Gary Oldman shows us his limitations in depicting Smiley, this ordinary man with extraordinary primness. His stiff-lipped almost lisping attempt at middle-upper classness is as false as any waxwork - which it most nearly represented. Then to eclipse the whole performance with the loss of accent in the only moment of emotion right at the end of the film - "Bi-oo-l" he says, in pure London area working class diction. Did the producers ever consider reversing the roles of Haydon and Smiley - because Colin Firth would have made a better job. As far as performances go in this movie - thank god for Tom Hardy for a bit of life.