Review of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, starring Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy and Mark Strong.
We've grown to know Gary Oldman through the parts he's played over the years. Sid Vicious in "Sid and Nancy." Joe Orton in "Prick Up Your Ears." He's had turns in "True Romance," "Dracula," "Air Force One," the Harry Potter movies, the latest Batman franchise, even "Kung Fu Panda 2." Usually, when you say that you've never seen someone like Gary Oldman do something like what he does in the new version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," you mean that they're over the top, crazy, going way out of their comfort zone, and possible out of yours. But Oldman, stepping into the shoes so ably filled by Alec Guinness in the original TV miniseries, is doing something different, playing a mannered, contemplative spy trying to track down a mole.
The good news, though, is that Oldman's terrific, and the fact that we're not used to seeing him play a character so level-headed simply works to his advantage. He's George Smiley, a British intelligence agent forced out at the height of the Cold War after a botched job in Hungary leaves undercover agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) exposed and shot, leading to the ouster of head man Control (John Hurt) and his deputy, Smiley. It's time for Smiley to move on, actually. He's a bit old, a bit tired, and he's having marital problems. But this leaves an unusual power vacuum, and soon Smiley is brought back to sort out which of his former colleagues—Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds), or Bill Haydon (Colin Firth) is feeding information to the Russians. See, all of them have a campaign of misinformation going with a double-agent turncoat, but according to rogue MI-6 man Ricky Tarr (Tom Hardy), and verified by Smiley's go-to guy Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), one of them is actually passing along the actual goods.
That sounds like a lot, doesn't it? Righty-ho. Well, it is. "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"—the title refers to the code names for the four suspects—is exceedingly complex, complicated, and convoluted, but with good reason. This is serious spy vs. spy stuff, and if you spend your time in the theater texting someone you'll probably lose the story. That would be too bad, because it's so rare that a thriller comes along that forces you to actually pay attention, and the adaptation from Tomas Alfredson—the man behind the blistering vampire film Let the Right One In—does just that. He, as well as Oldman, has big shoes to fill, but both of them do so, nicely. The film has a scruffy, retro feel to it, but Oldman's performance is mannered and controlled, and both Cumberbatch and Hardy give such nice performances as young, conflicted spies that you might not even notice just how solid their veteran counterparts are in their smaller roles. Clearly it's a project with a dream cast—though there are virtually no women in the film at all—but these days it's hard to get a team like this together without good writing. Every part is solid and real, and every one of these actors digs his teeth in, even though the roles themselves aren't particularly large. The fact that they're here at all is a good sign, and the fact that they do such terrific work, and that Alfredson keeps you guessing until the end, is a testament to what a thriller should and could be, rather than just what it might be.