New in Theaters:
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
In his slowly paced, dirty-minded adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, director Tomas Alfredson is faithful to the painstaking part of le Carre’s baroque and cynical fictions, almost to a fault. It’s 1973 and the British spy service is in crisis. The old leadership has been shown the door, following a blown operation the year before, in which an agent was shot in a very public and embarrassing way, in a Bucharest alley while trying to bring over a defector. Of course, not long after the new crew is installed at the head of the agency—which everyone calls the Circus—a whisper starts making the rounds that the Soviets have a mole at the highest level. The Circus must then turn to one of the men they’ve just dismissed, the mole-like and ironically named Smiley (Gary Oldman), to bring the matter to light…
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is playing now in limited release. You can read my full review at PopMatters.
