A complete and disastrous failure

Rating: 3/10 (10 January 2012)

Being John Le Carre's (and this particular novel's) faithful fan for so many years, - I've been impatiently waiting for this film to appear, and even contemplating pre-order of the BluRay version scheduled to hit the shelves on January the 30th. In my impatience I could've never imagined the 2011 version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" would appear to be such a disastrous failure... Most surprising has been Mr.John Le Carre's having actually participated in adaptation of the novel for screen : my first impression was the creators of the 2011 version have never read the book properly. I could imagine "squeezing" the novel to 2 hrs of screen-time was not an easy task, but quite a number of changes done to the plot seem completely out of place and utterly unjustified. Garry Oldman is an excellent actor, but who on earth told Mr.Alfredson this actor could actually do George Smiley? Same goes for most of the other characters : except for Control, Bill Haydon, Peter Guillaume and, probably, Connie Sachs and Rikki Tarr (sorry, have omitted little Bill Roach), - they all seem to have nothing to do with Mr.Le Carre's personages. Gone are all the subtleties of the novel, so wonderfully depicted by the BBC TV series of the '70s with great Alec Guinnes (who WAS George Smiley indeed), gone is the whole magic of Mr.Le Carre's epic spy novel. While one could probably applaud the "Circus atmosphere" as created by Mr.Alfredson and his Art- and Photography Directors, - using the Connie Sachs' language (which I don't recall from the book), after leaving the theater one cannot but feel "seriously under-f..ked"...