Inevitable comparisons

Rating: 7/10 (27 December 2011)

Though skilfully adapted and made with a pleasing combination of solidity and flair, this film ultimately disappoints. Its tone, grandly, cinematically sombre, strays occasionally into bathos or, at the end, barely suppressed triumphalism. At times you feel that television, an intrinsically more humdrum medium, is better suited to the moral seediness of this genre. And of course it's with its BBC television predecessor that this film invites comparison. Some things come out about even. John Hurt is a charismatic Control, even if the shortened format doesn't allow us to witness the gradual and complete disintegration of the character that Alexander Knox portrays in the BBC series. But Colin Firth brings nothing to the role of Haydon to match Ian Richardson's self-tormenting irony; it would have been interesting to see what Ciarán Hinds, already in the cast but underemployed as Roy Bland, might have done with the role. As the central character, Gary Oldman is an enigma, a man who reveals nothing of himself to others. Alec Guinness gives us something more complex, a character who reveals to others exactly what he wants them to see. In showing the light in his character, he also reveals the shadows. Oldman's Smiley is, by contrast, a hero for our modern age: we don't much care who or what he is as long as he is on our side and we win.