If It Looks Like a Turkey!!

Rating: 1/10 (10 September 2013)

Well if it looks like a turkey, walks like a turkey and gobbles like a turkey, then just like this film, it is a turkey. I wanted to enjoy this film and was very much looking forward to seeing it. I remember the BBC TV series very well and tried not to make comparisons, but I could not help it. The TV series was slow but it had style and atmosphere and suspense. This film version didn't have any of these things. Gary Oldman as George Smiley could just as well have been played by a dummy dressed in a suit. He had no emotion, no energy and just seemed to sit there looking into space. How he ever managed to get a wife with his zero personality is a bigger mystery than who the mole was. No wonder the poor woman sought solace and satisfaction elsewhere. Everything just felt flat and waiting for that spark to get the all thing going, never came. I knew who the mole was from the start after watching the original TV series, however, had I not known I would hardly have been sat on the edge of my seat wanting to know because I would not have cared. We never really got to know anything about the four suspects who all appeared to be incredibly dull. Peter Guillam played by Benedict Cumberbatch was portrayed as a homosexual with funny coloured hair. Dreadful!! I was going to buy the DVD but am glad now that I never got around to doing so.