The cast is uniformly excellent, notably Gary Oldman, Toby Jones and Colin Firth.
In this film image released by Focus Features, Gary Oldman is shown in a scene from "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy." (AP Photo/Focus Features, Jack English)“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” THREE STARS
Rated: R for bloody violence, sexual situations, brief nudity and strong language
Running time: 127 minutes
”If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend,” E.M. Forster wrote in 1938, “I hope I should have the guts to betray my country.”
For Forster that was a famous, and endlessly debated, part of his essay “What I Believe.”
For spy novelist John Le Carré – who actually began his professional life as the British spy David Cornwell – it’s a question that’s been very much at the core of his fiction.
What is loyalty? What is duty? And where do they run parallel, and where do they diverge, and what path is the honorable man to take when faced with that divergence?
Those are the themes of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” probably Le Carré’s most famous novel – after “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold” – and one which, decades after its justly famous adaptation into a miniseries, has become a feature film.
Because, although the story is punctuated by assassinations, there’s a different kind of violence at work here, another kind of murder. It’s the purely metaphoric knife in the back, and it really wounds – because, unlike the hitman’s bullet, it’s delivered by a friend.
“Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” was a big book — it took up six episodes of “Masterpiece Theater,” and ran even longer, in England — so the new filmmakers have had to do some pruning. Too much, perhaps.
Unless you’re a dedicated Le Carré fan, some of the lingo may slip by you until you
put it in context; the real relationships between the characters, or even who their opposite numbers are behind the Curtain, can take some puzzling out.
But the cast is uniformly excellent, from Gary Oldman’s cold unreadability as Smiley, the veteran British spy asked to find a traitor within his own agency, to a cranky Toby Jones and slippery Colin Firth, just two of his many suspects.
And superb, as always, is John Hurt, in a small but deeply felt turn as the agent who first uncovers the deception. Which, of course is only the first of many – and not even, perhaps, the greatest.
Because this is also a story about friends selling out friends, of wives betraying husbands, of everyone lying to anyone to gain an edge, an advantage, an extra bit of cash.
Still, director Tomas Alfredson plays things sedately. There is one nicely metaphoric touch early on, just before the scandal breaks, when we follow Smiley to get a new pair of glasses; he doesn’t know it yet, but clearly he is about to start seeing things in a brand-new way.
It’s a witty, playful hint of what’s to come. But mostly the film’s scenes unfold like quiet chamber music, which makes the occasional, deliberately odd note – a particularly nervous waiter, a glance across a courtyard held just a moment too long – resonate all the more dramatically.
Careful and contained, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” is not a movie for fans whose only reference are the James Bond films (or, worse, the Bourne pictures). There are no amazing stunts, or dizzying edits, or breakneck car chases. There isn’t even a fistfight.
Just the real horror of watching a lot of silent men sitting in quiet offices reading telexes from foreign cities. And then, with one curt nod, sentencing some old friend to death.