Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

“Utterly absorbing, extremely smart and... quite beautifully executed.”~Empire

Aroview: An enthralling, impeccably cast screen adaptation of John Le Carre’s quintessential cold war spy novel, centred on a retired George Smiley (Oldman) who is brought secretly back into the fold to uncover a mole within British Intelligence ranks.

Though squarely in the frame of British drama’s current obsession with all things period, dir. Alfredson (LET THE RIGHT ONE IN) brings a visual sensibility to the table that’s unmistakably modernist; every element of the production wrought with crisp attention to detail. If the mood of shady post-war Britain is perfectly captured though, the dense narrative elements are handled less smoothly, and fans of either the book or TV mini-series will recognize instantly that there’s less room for exposition in a truncated feature length context. While this could’ve been stretched out to accommodate the famously inscrutable spy-talk though, there’s something to be said for films that exist on their own terms, and require the audience to work their way into the cinematic world – even if at the expense of comprehensibility.

more matches…