Despite a great cast and good script material, the film is tiring, stagnant, a bit gray and boring to watch.
This film is a remake of an older film from 1973 (I haven't seen it yet, but I intend to), both of which are film adaptations of a spy novel that was written by John Le Carrée. Being the original story known for its quality and this film being an elaborate super production and with a cast full of established names, I was expecting a great film… but the truth is that I felt disappointed in that expectation. The movie is not as interesting and good as I would have liked.
In fact, the film has a lot of well-known actors, with the strongest and most impactful performance given to us by an experienced Gary Oldman. The actor regained his native English accent and was able to masterfully adapt to the character, fully deserving the Oscar nomination for Best Actor he received that year. Besides him, Toby Jones and Colin Firth were also in great shape in this film, but Benedict Cumberbatch, John Hurt and Tom Hardy are not far behind them.
The story is relatively simple: in the midst of Cold War intrigue, MI6 tried to help a Soviet officer defect in Budapest. This officer knew the identity of a double agent, undercover in the British services. However, the operation goes very badly and it becomes evident to the leaders of MI6 that there really are one or more traitors, very well placed within the secret service. To find out who they are, they call in George Smiley, a retired agent with a lot of experience.
On a technical level, I can't help but appreciate the dark cinematography and the way it tries to recreate the dirty, foggy and somewhat paranoid atmosphere of Cold War London, in addition to the atmosphere of British houses of that time and all the effort of the set and costumes. The film is effective in its effort to transport us to the time and context, and manages to place itself in a pleasantly paranoid environment, where everyone is suspicious of everyone else. It's not an action movie and, therefore, the effects are few and discreet, functional.
Despite strong performances from the cast and excellent source material and well-written script, the film has two main issues: atmosphere and pacing. Tomas Alfredson deliberately slowed the film, and that makes the film tiresome and boring, if you add the lack of movement, the endless dialogue, the way each action and movement takes as long as possible in front of the camera. Also, one has to be very attentive to the names of the various characters, and their role in the film, or we will never understand the plot while watching the film.
