Depends if you've seen the BBC serial

Rating: Null/10 (17 September 2011)

As someone who watched the original BBC adaptation in 1980 and admired it as one of the best BBC series ever made, watching this film was a disappointment. It suffers by comparison in almost every respect. At key scenes I kept thinking back to the BBC version: Smiley's interviews with Connie, beautifully played by Beryl Reid; the scenes with Jerry Westerby played by Joss Ackland; the introduction to the main characters as we see them enter the Circus meeting room for the first time - particularly Percy's elaborate pipe filling. In this version we have moved on three scenes in the time it takes Percy to tamp down his tobacco.
And that is one of the major problems with this film, the plot exposition is so compressed. It has been well done, but it was the slow unfolding of the 'beautiful knot' that was half the pleasure. The other half was the incomparable acting led by Guinness. Gary Oldman is a seriously good actor, but Guinness was a great actor and could convey with a gaze or a look the deep intelligence and melancholy at the heart of the character in a way that Oldman can't.
Even the recreation of the 1970's, though convincing , has to be strived for, whereas in 1979 it was just there for the BBC, ready to be used. The overall result left me ultimately feeling uninvolved. The film ended, the lights came up and that was that. OK but not as good as the book or the TV series. Now that's damning with faint praise.