Excruciatingly slow and unsatisfying, not even its talented cast can save it

Rating: 4/10 (4 November 2015)

I can't believe a spy film about moles in the spy service starring Oldman, Firth, Hardy and Cumberbatch could be this dull. This movie was so boring and so hard to follow and so poorly paced that I had to watch it in two sittings.
Technically the film is nice (some nice camera-work, some harsh sound used to good effect), but I doubt even Deakins or Lubezki could shoot this film well enough to keep my interest. I have never been so bored in the opening credits of a film, they just seemed to go on because director Tomas Alfredson refuses to engage in any story while there are unobtrusive words flashing on the screen's corner.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy has a pair of interesting spy sequences - the first being the opening sequence and the second being a well orchestrated infiltration by Cumberbatch's character. The rest of the film is extremely dull and mostly involves flashbacks, unnecessary subplots and very long boring stories told by people in British monotones. Narratively this film is jumbled. Its trying to tell the story about Oldman pursuing a spy in the agents. But there's also a story about a mission gone wrong that forced Oldman into retirement in the first place. Then there's the adventures of Tom Hardy. Then there's the story about Oldman and his wife and also another story about a cigarette lighter. Its nigh on impossible to deduce what's going on because the film flashes between events (where everyone looks the same too) without explanation. Why is Mark Strong teaching at a school? Was he released? Is this a prequel? Not until over halfway through the film do we learn that yes he was released. You pretty much need to watch this film with the Wikipedia summary open beside you, and even then it won't help.
The casting is where a spy film collapses. You have to cast suspects of equal standing - either high or low. In a far superior John le Carré adaptation, A Most Wanted Man, the film keeps all the relevant players as unknown actors. Here we have the last year's Best Actor Oscar Winner, a pair of character actors and some guy no one has ever heard of outside Europe. Combine that with the fact that Firth has more screen time than the other three combined and if you couldn't figure out it was him, then woe is you. Toby Jones is horrendously miscast - the man looks better suited for a live action Faraway Tree movie than the knighted head of a spy agency. It was almost impossible to take him seriously.
Positive performances include a chameleonic Oldman (whose perpetually blank expression managed to unnerve me as a viewer), a commanding John Hurt (whose character vanishes with barely a whimper) and some stellar supporting work from Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch (despite his awful wig), the latter two being the only emotional characters in the film. Hardy is fantastic in a character who really could have been relegated to a bit part.
If I were making this film, I'd cut about 90% of the dead air time and ramp the final reveal into something that actually had an impact on the audience instead of fizzling. Then I'd swap Dencick with Hardy and Hurt with Hind, so we actually had a guessing game on our hands. What we actually got literally put me to sleep.