The unglamorous world of espionage.

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2012)

Director Tomas Alfredson and company do their best to deglamorize the surly double dealing world of counter intelligence in John Le Carre's Tinker, Tailor soldier spy. Drained of color and muted in every way ( tan and gray seems to be the fashion choice for everyone ) it is a long way from the jet setting action packed world of James Bond.
After a mission goes very bad in Budapest the head of a British Intelligence branch, Control ( John Hurt) is forced out along with agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) of the bureau. When it's discovered that a mole is operating within the agency Smiley is brought back in an attempt to expose him.
Without the fast cars, gadgets, babes and things to blow up TTSS is a pretty somber and low key affair that has an intriguing enough start. The agents are mostly surly, cynical and distrustful and suspects are numerous. The narrative itself is a series of confusing flashbacks and dark shadows however and the film soon begins to drown in convolution bogging down in excessive wordplay and the occasional shock incidental.
Oldman as Smiley looks and moves with a convincing world weary persona of a man who takes his work seriously, maybe too much. Director Alfredson's intent to keep things low key drains the life out of most of his characters, especially Smiley and by extension the picture itself. His direction overall is erratic at best as his juggling act of adding peripheral characters and placing more importance than needed on superfluous scenes only serves to make matters more distracting and confusing. Sober as it is most of the way Alfredson tacks on a mawkish denouement with a touch of happily ever after summed up in natty threads and an expression of smug satisfaction which deviates in a jarring way the film's mood and tone over the previous two hours.