Doomed from the start

Rating: 3/10 (26 June 2012)

For those of you who don't know, a 6 part BBC Miniseries of this Le Carre novel was aired in 1979. It does an excellent job of relating a story who's characters are as complex as the plot, if not in fact completely entwined with it.
This film does not.
I'm not a professional critic so I'll say it as I saw it: The acting is bad, inappropriate for what Le Carre is trying to convey. The actors themselves don't seem to have had a chance to immerse themselves sufficiently to seem real. They are obviously acting - and whenever that starts happening in any film, it starts haemorrhaging points... badly.
The 6 part series is gritty and real, the rooms and desks very typical of the time and place. Whereas the film is stylized, as though some arty period consultant had done the whole thing - ridiculous and insulting.
Such an absurdly enormous fuss was made of Oldman (who I like. and is better suited to 'Leon' etc.) who plays Smiley. Once you have seen the Mini-series and seen it done by the then Alec Guinness, you will see what he's meant to be like. Why did Oldman try to copy him? That was doomed from the start anyway.
I honestly don't know why they bothered with the whole thing at all and have a suspicion that a big fuss was made about the film generally because it was rubbish and they were driven by financial fears; it had very slick 'damage control' written all over it. The only alternative is that they are all completely loopy. (Probably a bit of both)
The reviews on here which are positive about the film can only use phrases like 'it's really good' and fail to explain in plain English why it deserves watching, let alone nominations.
The mini series is still very watchable.
This sort of tale really isn't suited to re-makes and films and all that sort of thing. Just leave it alone - why spoil such a good thing?