Review: Tinker Tailor Solider Spy (2011)
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was first a complex, labyrinthine novel by John le Carre. Then it was a complex, labyrinthine miniseries on BBC TV. Now it is a lean two-hour feature where the complexity gets lost in the labyrinth. The film is masterfully crafted and beautifully acted, thoroughly cinematic in every way – except for its screenplay, which painfully compresses the story and structures the narrative as a rote procedural. The subtle, gorgeous, endlessly evocative filmmaking is more than enough to hold our interest, but this is a movie with a story to tell, and the story is so obfuscated by this script that it’s hard to maintain interest.