No emotional investment

Rating: 2/10 (4 August 2012)

I like to invest with the characters I see in films. I like to experiencing what they're feeling, go with them on a journey, feel like I'm living their life as it plays out on screen. I like to laugh with them, cry with them, go psycho with them. Even the Japanese stone-face films of Beat Takeshi figure out clever ways to show the hidden emotions, the ones lurking behind the featureless faces.
Sadly, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY is a film that offers absolutely zero emotional investment on the part of any of its characters. You simply don't care about any of them - in particular the lead, George Smiley, played by Gary Oldman. You know, I remember the days when Oldman used to fire up Hollywood with his blazing performances in the likes of LEON. These days, on the strength of this and his turns in the BATMAN films, he's simply a bore.
The story is s-l-o-w and drawn out unnecessarily to no great end. It's also overly complex, and the script takes great delight in tricking the viewer with one unbelievable plot twist after another. I wasn't expecting another Bourne or Bond, but I was expecting characters I cared about in dramatic situations. I got neither. Tomas Alfredson, of the excellent LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (a film where, you know, I cared about what happened to the people in it) directs a film of an admitted icy beauty, but I can look at the ice formations in my freezer if I want to see that.
Yes, the cast is good. Yes, it's a film that takes a more original approach to the spy genre than most as of late. But is it a good film? Not by a long shot. By the end, I was so uninvolved that I didn't even take note of who the real spy was - by that stage I was long past caring...