Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) 7/10

Starring : Gary Oldman, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong
Director : Tomas Alfredson
Running Time : 128 mins

It’s 1972, and when Control (Hurt) resigns over the failure of a mission in Budapest and his belief that there is a mole working in British Intelligence, George Smiley (Oldman) is forced into early retirement. He is later asked to investigate the suspicions of a mole due to the mission failure in Hungary and the questionably successful source of Soviet Intelligence, Operation Witchcraft.

John le Carre’s stories are famously slow and tend to have little or no action. Unlike Bond films, this moves more towards realism than sensationalism and concentrates on the paranoia of the period rather than the nuclear threats from enemy countries. Fans of traditional spy fiction will love this, but personally I found it a little hard going and it did drag a little in the middle.

You’ll like this if you liked : The Debt