“Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” or the film that came in from the cold.

This was a very engrossing, tightly woven, and well-paced film, that doesn’t talk down to the viewer.  Gary Oldham is fantastic.   As is my newest favorite British import, Tom Hardy. 

With very much a LeCarre atmosphere, this movie evokes the kind of spare twisted feeling common to the 70’s and the cold war.  As complex as the cold war itself, the twists and turns of “TTSS” keep you guessing all through the movie. 

The pace of the movie is one of its best features, never moving to fast to follow, but not so slow you get bored.  The pace feels very natural, as the film moves back and forth between the past and current events. 

Unlike in many thrillers, the filmmaker, Tomas Alfredson, (director of the superb “Let the Right One In”) does not give away the surprise too fast. Sometimes in a film you can tell who the bad guy will be, just by how long the camera lingers on a particular character, or by how much weight the character seems to bring with him.   Alfredson, on the other hand, leads you down many paths.  Drawing your attention first to one character and then another, making you unsure which one is the traitor, so much so, I even found myself wondering if there was a cabal involved.

Generally I am not a fan of cold war films, but this one is great.  Gary Oldham is fantastic a George Smiley, a man we want to like, but who disconcerts us with his willingness to subvert the truth in pursuit of his objective. The cast is chock full of great character actors and everyone turns in a solid, convincing performance.  Though as usual, Tom Hardy (looking disturbingly like a young Don Johnson, though not acting like him) dominates the screen in every scene he is in, as does the laboriously named, but imminently likable Benedict Cumberbatch as Smiley’s right hand man Guillam.  Well worth the money, I say, go see this one.