Don't bother, unless you already know the plot

Rating: 2/10 (29 February 2012)

I wouldn't recommend this film unless you've read the book or watched the predecessor version of Tinker Tailor. But seeing this version without such prior "research" was like walking into a crowd of strangers while one of them is in the middle of telling an "in" joke. I like movies that hold me in suspense, but the suspense shouldn't be about "who the hell is that, where is he, and what's going on?" Worse, the editing of many scenes seems designed to enhance the gratuitous confusion--abruptly cutting a scene just as I might have the slightest inkling of who that is, or what's going on. Am I just stupid, is this a gimmick, or did the film's director and editor simply make some consistently poor choices? I vote for the latter. Ultimately, I was left with this profound question: why should I care about a Cold War plot, 20 years after the Cold War is over, when they don't even bother to tell me who is who? There's lots of good acting, wasted, just like my evening watching this.