Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (15)

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Dir: Tomas Alfredson

With: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, John Hurt

IN days when a bespoke suit is as out of reach as Jupiter, it is an absolute pleasure to slip into Tomas Alfredson’s spy drama. Run your hands over that silky narrative, gaze in wonder at the detail of those performances, breathe in the sheer class on offer as a best of British cast do justice to a best of British novel.

Some wondered if Alfredson, the Swedish director of the frighteningly smart vampire horror Let the Right One In, could match the television version of John le Carré’s novel. Wonder no longer. In some respects he has gone one better, delivering a film that’s truly cinematic in its design and ambition. To this he adds flourishes of theatricality which are the very dab when it comes to conveying the spooks’ bizarre world.

His film opens with a touch of pure theatre with the hero, George Smiley (played by Gary Oldman), saying nothing. He goes on saying nothing for a good 20 minutes. The most thrilling thing he does during this period is buy a new pair of glasses. That, and be retired discreetly out of the service after a mission goes wrong. It’s all a far cry from the opening hoopla of a Bond movie, but in its own way is just as thrilling. Here, we see, is a man of few words but maximum vigilance.

MI6 is in crisis mode, or as much in crisis mode as a bunch of chaps care to admit. Control (John Hurt in magnificently crumpled, form) suspects that a Soviet mole has burrowed into the organisation and has reached the higher ranks. When the politicians, always the last to know, hear about this, Smiley is asked to don his Wilsonian mac once more and investigate.

Alfredson, working from a dextrous screenplay by Peter Straughan (How to Lose Friends and Alienate People) and Bridget O’Connor, loses no time in setting up the basic story. Matters become increasingly complex from here, but the foundations are in place. This is a tale of low cunning and high treachery, a murder mystery in which loyalty, to one’s country, one’s colleagues, is the victim. Feel free to rub your paws in anticipation of the skulduggery to come.

One by one, the main characters take up their positions on the board. Meet smoothy chops Bill Haydon (who else but Colin Firth?), Percy the prickly Scot (Toby Jones doing a neat job with the accent, albeit with a few brief detours to Ireland), Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch), the ambitious middle-ranker called on to assist Smiley, Connie the old war horse (Kathy Burke) and several more. Such is the quality of the cast that it doesn’t take long to get the measure of each character yet want to know more.

Britain in the 1970s is a character in its own right. What a drab place it is. John Hurt, late of 1984, must have felt quite at home again amid all those greens and browns and greys. It seems to be raining everywhere, including indoors, if you can see the rain through the fog of fag smoke. For period enthusiasts, Alfredson lays it on thick and juicy. There’s even a scene in that height of Seventies’ fine dining, a Wimpy bar.

Periods of jaw-jaw are punctuated with scenes of covert war. It’s all terribly civilised, with management meetings and file retrieval taking the place of gun battles and car chases. It’s testament to Alfredson’s skill that he can make such scenes throb with menace. For those in search of more overt action, the appearance of Tom Hardy, as the low-level operative who promises he’s on to something big, delivers the goodies.

Hardy, like the rest of the cast, goes at his part like a man possessed by the plot. If this were a premier league of British actors he would be the Rooney, except with more hair (even after the transplant). Into an environment of shabbiness he brings some much-needed sleaze. This is a spy story, after all.

Whenever things are in danger of becoming overheated or too complex, Alfredson quietens matters with some more theatricality. The scene where Smiley recalls his meeting with Karla, the KGB’s most feared agent, is electrifying. Alfredson can do comedy too, as in the snapshots of the Christmas parties at the “Circus”. Oldman handles the Karla scene like he does everything else, with slow-burning brilliance. Following the likes of Alec Guinness into a role would bring on the heebie-jeebies in many an actor, but Oldman doesn’t hold back, managing to make Smiley his own while recalling the majesty of Guinness’s performance in the television series.

Understated, gabby and complicated, Alfredson’s picture is everything marketing bods advise a movie not to be in these attention deficient times. Yet rich man, poor man, beggar man or just a regular cinemagoer, new to the story or not, you’ll relish being one of Smiley’s people.