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Created Jan 02, 2012 05:32PM PST • Edited May 01, 2019 11:30PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   The best spy movie ever isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. Why? Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy unspools its complex story in non-linear fashion via a swirl of supporting characters declaiming with extreme British reserve. Many people thus find the movie nigh on impossible to follow and deadly solemn to boot.

   However, for those who enjoy a good puzzle, outstanding acting and brilliant filmmaking that pays off countless clues, TTSS is indeed the best spy movie ever. The hunt for a Soviet mole atop early 1970s British intelligence informs a story full of quiet cunning and deep intrigue.

   A stellar cast of British acting greats – including past-master Gary Oldman as consummate spymaster George Smiley and incipient superstar Tom Hardy as an over-his-head young operative – makes it a showcase of meaty movie acting.

   The decision to place star Swedish director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) at the helm clearly paid off for the executive producers, novelist John le Carré among them. Alfredson’s closely observed, meditative style fits like a glove with le Carré’s perspicacious story.

4. Acting

   Perfect 5.0

   Gary Oldman’s deeply still performance as consummate spymaster George Smiley is a triumph of understatement. His Smiley doesn’t speak for the first several minutes, notwithstanding the opportunities. He’s the least loquacious character the movies have seen for a long time. Nor is he physically imposing. However, Oldman gives him a highly evolved sense of gravitas that anchors the wildly complex movie.

   Around him swirl a panoply of great British actors.

   • Tom Hardy as a romantically involved operative. Hardy cites Oldman as his acting hero, making their extended scene together an acting duet of great interest.
   • Mark Strong as a deeply interesting loner agent. Strong should be in every movie from here on out! Fortunately he seems to be heading that way, with his IMDb filmography already listing 71 titles. TTSS joins other faves such as Kick-Ass and Sherlock Holmes.
   • Ciarán Hinds as a manly spymaster. Hinds should be in every other movie from here on out! He’s making good progress on that, his IMDb filmography now totaling 78 titles, including The Debt and the Harry Potter finale.
   • Toby Jones as a weaselly little spymaster, a step up for the guy who played Dobby the Elf in Harry Potter.
   • Colin Firth as a suave spymaster who deserves a comeuppance. Last year’s Best Actor Oscar-winner dresses up any cast.
   • John Hurt as “Control”, the deeply troubled top spymaster. Has an actor ever been more properly named than John Hurt?
   • Benedict Cumberbatch makes a strong impression as a young agent who comes to learn the price of serving the Circus. Cumberbatch is also now starring in War Horse.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Perfect 5.0

7. Female Costars Perfect 5.0

8. Male Costars Perfect 5.0

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

    Closely filmed both visually and aurally. Of the former, tight shots abound, emphasizing size contrasts and heightening visual perspective. For instance, Tomas Alfredson’s camera takes a full second to pan up from a person’s calf to his head, never filling the full screen height with more than a third of the actor’s image.

    Of the latter, many scenes are aurally still, so every tiny sound looms large, even a drop of sweat splatting on a tabletop. Combined with the heightened visual perspective, the effect is to create a sense of hyper-alertness, not unlike that of George Smiley and his confreres.

11. Direction Really Great 4.5

    As in Let the Right One In, Alfredson uses stillness as a deeply effective technique.

12. Play Great 4.0

    John le Carré newbies have to hang on for dear life, what with his penchant for telling a story mostly through flashbacks and heavy use of jargon. One tip: Karla is the male head of Soviet spy operations.

13. Music Really Great 4.5

14. Visuals Really Great 4.5

    The CIA is known colloquially as The Company. Britain’s MI6 – called The Circus here – comes across as a very British company – hierarchical, well dressed and extremely proper. Bravo old chaps. It’s especially fascinating to see how they met in railcar-like quiet rooms and used pre-electronic IT to keep track of missions and operatives.

15. Content

16. Edge

    Sordid 2.7

    While not an action movie, there are several shocking gunshot deaths.

17. Sex Titillating 2.5

18. Violence Brutal 2.9

19. Rudeness Profane 2.6

21. Reality

    Glib 1.1

    John le Carré’s characters may doubt the democratic West’s virtue in an extended war and the author himself may also share their qualms. However, his story makes clear that the illiberal East was profoundly monstrous. Life was cheap for the Communists. Hapless bystanders and legitimate prisoners alike were so much cannon fodder.

    One of the movie’s prosaic scenes makes the point: A brutalized prisoner is carried on a gurney along an Istanbul dock to a Soviet cargo ship headed for the USSR. Meanwhile a young boy gambols nearby, idly watching the brutal kidnapping paraded in front of him. While the banality of evil is a term best reserved for the Nazis, the Soviets weren’t far removed.

    The wonder isn’t that the West resorted to underhanded trickery, it’s that the West maintained its basic decency while engaged in a decades long Cold War with the Evil Empire. John le Carré may not like it, but it took a couple of heros above his pay grade – Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan – to bring down George Smiley’s Soviet enemy.

22. Circumstantial Glib 1.3

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Natural 1.0