Watch the miniseries first!

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2012)

If you only see this movie without having seen the Alec Guinness miniseries, then you're doing yourself an injustice. Le Carré is about people as much as plot. We know what an intelligence service does, but what kind of people do it? Both sides have an overriding interest, to gain an edge over their adversaries, on behalf of "the higher good". Le Carré's theme in all his books is, Is it worth it? The miniseries gives us a chance to explore this theme -- the movie does not.
In the Harry Palmer Michael Caine vehicles the hero is a cynic, but because he's still young he's not beaten down. In le Carré, everybody (except ironically the villain) is beaten down, either figuratively or literally. You get a sense of torpor, or moral exhaustion. But in the miniseries, you understand why. In this movie everyone and everything is just SLOW, including the camera work.
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold successfully depicted the le Carré malaise, because Richard Burton was an expert at the worn-out protagonist. (See Night of the Iguana and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.) Actually, Gary Oldman is pretty good as George Smiley. He's not quite the cipher that Alec Guinness was, but he's close. Unfortunately, director Tomas Alfredson has Smiley doing this stage business with the glasses, which is just that -- stage business -- while with Guinness, the glasses serve to make Smiley opaque.
I hate to think the makers of this movie are making a word play of Smiley's name, because throughout, Gary Oldman sports a frigid smile. Are they goofing with the audience?
And then there are the Tinker, Tailor, Soldier...characters. The point of the exercise was a classic whodunit cliché: Lots of suspects, now who is the perp? The story examines each candidate, and it's up to us to guess who. Everybody has an ax to grind, a conventional setup. Problem is, in the length of a movie there's no time to make us care about them.
Maybe this is what makes Alfredson approach Tinker Tailor the way he does. Perhaps he understands that most of the audience already knows the mole, because they read the book and/or saw the miniseries. So, why should they watch it again? To see how the human beings are dehumanized by their, at the time, very important work. But this really doesn't happen in this movie, because there isn't enough time. The characters were certainly dehumanized, but it's like they were just parachuted into their roles.
If you haven't see the Alec Guinness miniseries, then see it first. If you have seen the miniseries, then be ready for a letdown.