Two-pace movie

Rating: Null/10 (3 October 2011)

I can understand why people have difficulties with this movie: it has dual-pacing. There are sequences in which important plot points are covered and gone in less than five seconds (what happens to Control, the vital knock on Smiley's door etc), which means that if you're not paying attention, you lose your grip on the story and are unlikely to retrieve it. But then there are long, languid scenes which convey the dreary essence of day-to-day espionage. These are the sequences which, I suspect, lead some in the audience to think that the movie itself is slow and boring. Keeping track of the blink-and-its-gone stuff and coping with the long, soporific stretches mean that Tinker, Tailor demands a lot of work from the audience to get the best out of it. Not everyone is prepared to work that hard, I guess. Should they have to? Your call. One major relief is that it isn't a film filled with explosions and car chases, tailored to the tastes of 14-year-old boys, who generally can't tell the difference between a good movie and an empty movie.