A major disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (4 July 2016)

It was a conceit for the producers to think they could do justice to Le Carre's masterpiece in a 2 hour movie. Instead, what they have delivered is a rushed and incoherent condensation of the major plot points of the book which omits most of the backstory, with its petty bureaucratic infighting and backstabbing, sacrificing the dramatic weight of the original. It lacks the sad atmosphere of slow and inexorably building suspense that makes Tinker Tailor such a remarkable story and it's what makes this hurried remake for the attention deficit crowd so ill-conceived. That people have been impressed with this movie only shows how low the bar has been set for movie drama. Oldman's glum, wooden Smiley fails to convey any of the nuanced internal conflicts that were portrayed so brilliantly by Alec Guinness in the 1979 English TV mini-series. Skip this travesty and check out the 1979 production. You'll see what a great dramatization can be.