Boring remake of a boring original - TV movie really

Rating: Null/10 (6 October 2011)

Le Carre adaptations are usually boring, portentous, critic drooling wastes of time - this one really lives up to form. The worst sin is that it is in cinemas - like other UK films like 'The Kings Speech' and 'Made in Dagenham' they are nice little TV movies that do not require the big screen and all the whoha. I saw the original TV series with Alec Guinness - boring, prosaic, but of its time and therefore understandable, eg The Cold War was still on. But now? Why? What for? To give the next generation of British thesps (at least we did not get Jim Broadbent or Bill Nighy!) a fattish cheque? What was Ciaran Hinds doing in it, except to provide another 'star' to take attention from whether Colin Firth is the mole or not? Yes, it is the old hoary story of whether there is a mole at the highest echelons of British Secret Service, and retired George Smiley (played by Gary Oldman in exactly the same manner as Alec Guinness - fishy eyed and cold) is the man brought in to find the traitor. Of course the even bigger sin of the original was that they gave Alec Guinnes the Best Actor BAFTA instead of Bernard Hill's monumental and iconic portrayal of Yosser 'Gis a job' Hughes!!!!!!!!!!!!! The script suffers because you do not begin to get near the four main suspicious characters - there is little interaction and even less with Smiley. Maybe, I'm wrong but in the original Guiness/Smiley interviewed all four, didn't he? There are gaping plot holes, the direction is so slow I've watched paint drying quicker, and even the introduction of young male eye candy in Tom Hardy does not help. Overblown, of little interest to young cinema-goers (oldies will nod off), and showing a poor representation of 1973 (looks more like 1961!) this film just meanders to a conclusion which you have no idea how Smiley/Oldman worked out the villain, except he had a flash coat and shagged his wife! Oh well, it's conned a lot of us oldies to go and watch. See David Hare's 'Page Eight' for a rip off setting and Ryan Phillippe in a genuine fairly modern Russian spy traitor thriller.