Why bother?

Rating: 4/10 (13 August 2013)

'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' is a damn good story. The BBC dramatised it very well with great actors and, more importantly, using a mini-series format. Which led me to wonder what the makers of this version could have hoped to add. With a well acted miniseries version out there creating a feature film version is akin to creating a Ferrari based on a moped engine. i.e. it just cannot be.
So I have just watched it hoping to find out because (i) I wanted to make a 'fair' comment, (ii) there was a tiny chance it MAY have been worth seeing & (iii) I had nothing better to do.
Perhaps Gary Oldman could have created a really good Smiley but he doesn't have the time to develop the character anywhere near properly. Perhaps he may even have been able to do even better than Guinness (scoring 11/10) but the the actual result, with the BBC version out there, scores him very low. There is far too little of him to judge compared to what Alec Guinness & Simon Russell Beale have given to Smiley. He stood no chance.
That comment applies equally to the whole film. No matter how many great actors, money, etc the makers may throw at it they had no hope of creating as good a version, not without the extra time. And they failed miserably.
And that's exactly what I saw when I watched it. I found the question 'What could they hope to achieve' unanswered.
So, before this film even reached the box office anyone honest would have said "Don't bother with it. If you want to see LeCarre's story WELL told get the BBC version. We've only got two hours to tell the story in, not a hope of beating them. This remake is pointless".
If you prefer cod-roe to caviar, cola to champagne, Ford Fiestas to Ferraris & plastic cutlery to silver then this might be the version for you. Anyone else get the BBC version where there is room for character development, drama & suspense. A 9/10 version. Or even better - read the book.