Stylish, Atmospheric. But a little hollow and pointless

Rating: 6/10 (5 January 2012)

"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" is an incredible name for a spy book or a movie. Pity what lies underneath is an competent but average story. Starting with the school-boyish obsession with talking in code (where the title comes from) to the ho-hum Russian characterizations and overly stuffy and bureaucratic view of the British intelligence structure, "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" becomes as dramatic as a chess move with a dramatic name.
While I was watching the movie, I caught myself thinking about different things, my thoughts wandering because there is just so much space between what goes on. As we get more characters and sub-characters, each one played by as recognizable an actor as the other, all the alluded bombast, gravity and grandeur of the espionage world just boils down to what seems like petty personal bickering. The old cold war character templates, the beautiful Russian girl and the sadist torturer, just feels tired and one-dimensional and personally, just reminds me of the moldy smell of old paperbacks more than anything.
The huge hype around the movie got me to see this but while perhaps enjoyable in its atmosphere and music, it's probably the making of simple things overly complicated that made the movie feel hollow and pointless.