Tuesday, 10 September 2013

Lots of detail, little time

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Directed by Tomas Alfredson this film based on the novel of the same name stars Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch and John Hurt. After being kicked out of MI6 George Smiley is brought back in to hunt for a Soviet mole at the highest levels of the service.

There is a huge amount of material to be condensed down into a 2 hour film here but the film does a really good job of capturing not only the period of the story but also the paranoia of the setting. Inevitably there will be comparisons with the earlier TV adaptation and I think this version does lack a little of the punch in the final reveal that the TV series had but it does well with in the constraints of it's run time. The direction is really good but I do wonder if someone less familiar with the material would have found the film as easy to follow.


5/5

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