Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Movie review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy




It's a story about British spies in the 70s where George/Smiley (Gary Oldman) tries to flush out a Russian mole among the top chain of MI6.

I really wanted to like this movie. It seemed like the kind of film I'd enjoy. Spies gathering information on one another not knowing who to trust, filled with a cast of phenomenal actors and directed by Thomas Alfredsson, who directed "Let The Right One In" which is one of my all time favorite films.

Sadly, I didn't enjoy the movie particularly much. It's all too slow and yet kind of hard to follow even though I really payed attention to it (I even re-winded it here and there because I missed a line or two of dialog), there's a major lack of emotion in the film and it has no weight behind any of it's revelations. Even the big final one concerning who's the mole. When they revealed that I simply reacted 'oh... ok'. I didn't get exactly how they found out it was him, or why he did it outside of "the west is so ugly these days".

As for the emotional aspect of the film, there were only like 5 to 10 scenes (scenes, not sequences) where a character expressed any emotion, and it was still very downplayed in half those scenes. The acting is very good though, especially by Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch. Thomas Alfredsson also manages to give us great visuals and a strong atmosphere. But that's just about all the praise I can give it.

I can understand why people like it, and I'm not saying that it's a poorly made movie, but it simply failed to entertain me. So I don't care for it.

Score: 4/9

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