Competent But Obtuse.

Rating: 6/10 (28 September 2019)

If I could wrap up my feelings on Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy in three words, it would be "competent, but obtuse". Because there's a lot I liked about it for sure: the acting was pretty decent (Hardy, Oldman and Cumberbatch were my favourites as I think they did the best job and had the most development), the sets, costumes and props all looked great and seemed to fit well into the Cold War era atmosphere. Plus the cinematography is great with a lot of variation in shot composition, colour and lighting - with its usually dark and oppressive environments with cold sterile walls and harsh shadows (again, fitting as a Cold War era film, an era with much uncertainty and looming threats around every corner). However, there are just a lot of things holding this movie back from being anything truly special. For one, the narrative is very confusing. It demands so much of your attention, which isn't a bad thing necessarily. But I often found myself being bewildered by the arrival of seemingly new plot elements and characters that the movie, I feel, didn't do an adequate enough job of setting up.
And there's so many of these major and minor characters that you need to be aware of. But the movie doesn't spend a lot of time on building or developing many of them...which leads to much of the cast being bland, unmemorable and very similar to one another despite the overall quality of the performances. Also, the reveal of the identity of the mole inside British Intelligence was very underwhelming considering the immense amount of tension that was being built throughout the course of the film and especially in the last fifteen to twenty minutes. I noticed a lot of plot inconsistencies or discrepancies too, like "Why did Jim Prideaux act nice to that school kid and then yell at him to go away just before he shot Bill Haydon (Firth), who was the mole and his old friend? Was it because he didn't want to get the kid involved in what he was doing or trying to preserve his innocence? Early on the film, did he think he could learn to be better and integrate himself back into society, but discovered that he couldn't and thus tried to shut the boy out of his life? Either way, his aggression seems out of character. Why was Bill at all allowed to wander around outside and along the fence freely considering his status as a high profile target? Did Peter (Cumberbatch) ever make up with his lover/family member/something else (Again, the nature of that character is not really established)? He kicked him out of the house to prevent him from being targeted, presumably. If the answer is no, that he didn't meet up with him again, he seems remarkably chipper about it at the end. If it's yes, it certainly wasn't included in the film. Are we just supposed to intuit that he did? Speaking of which, Tom Hardy's arc just ends, the last time we see Hardy is a closeup of him in the rain, looking somewhat sullen. That's...one way of ending a character's story, I guess."
Overall: Maybe I'll like it more on a repeat viewing, now that I have a decent grasp on the story. But for now, the best I can give it is a 6/10 - mainly for its cinematography and performances. The rating could be lower, more so than it could be higher.