Should Have Been Better

Rating: 5/10 (1 February 2012)

I was looking forward to seeing this film. I heard great reviews and it was based on a John Le Carre novel (The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, The Constant Gardener), so I thought it would be a great spy tale from the times of the cold war. I was half right. It is a spy tale from the times of the cold war but it is so boring and jumbled that I was having a hard time following the story.
In a nutshell, John Hurt is Control, head of the British Intelligence in the 1970's, and he resigns after an operation in Budapest goes wrong. He believes one of his four senior officers is a mole working for the Russians. Gary Oldman's character is Smiley, one of those senior officers and is forced out with the resignation of Control. Smiley is then asked by a top ranking government official to investigate a story told to him by a rogue agent, Ricky Tarr, that supported Control's (Hurt) suspicion of a mole in their midst. With the efforts of Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), Smiley finds information that leads him to Jim Prideaux, who was the agent at the heart of Budapest operation. This allows Smiley to put the pieces together and discover who the mole is.
The beginning is painfully dull and once the story begins, the flashback scenes are so poorly placed and confusing. It's hard enough to follow an intriguing spy film and when you have so many flashbacks shoehorned into the film, it's just awful.
Also there are stories that never get developed or even resolved at the end. * SPOILER* * SPOILER** SPOILER* For instance, what was up with the relationship between the boy and Prideaux? Where was that going and was it really necessary? Was Ricky Tarr ever going to find out about his lover? Did Smiley ever confront his adulteress wife? And what was up with Ciaran Hinds' character, the Soldier? Did he even have a line? That is waste of good talent. I understand you can't fit everything in, but it's nice if it makes sense.
The ending also seemed tacked on, there was no confrontation between the characters and it didn't tie everything together. I also thought there should have been a lot less people surviving at the end.
I feel bad for the cast, who gave outstanding performances in the film, but this mish mash of time jumping, poor pacing and bad editing really doesn't do them justice. I'm afraid all this movie does is make me wish I had read the book.