Sunday, March 25, 2012

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY


Mystery, suspense

PRINCIPAL CAST MEMBERS
Mark Strong: Jim Prideaux, field agent in Czechoslovakia
Tom Hardy: London based field agent Ricki Tarr
Benedict Cumberbatch: his immediate superior Peter Guillam
Simon McBurney: Oliver Lacon, the Civil Service officer responsible for the Intelligence Service
Gary Oldman: George Smiley, retired former Deputy Head of the Service
Toby Jones: Percy Alleline, Chief of the Circus.
Colin Firth: one of his deputies, Bill Haydon Commander of London Station
CiarĂ¡n Hinds: Roy Bland, Second in command of London Station
David Denick: Toby Esterhase, one of four who ran Witchcraft

REVIEW
Based on the novel written by John le CarrĂ©, seeing it as a movie requires you to be more alert to what is going on regarding people and events because you do not have the luxury of turning back the pages to refresh your memory when things get confusing. And things get confusing very quickly: to begin with a lot of jargon is used so it takes some figuring out to realize reference to “the circus” is the name for the British secret service agency MI6 and not some place where you find animals and clowns performing. Similarly the cousins are not relatives of these agents, that is the name they have given for the C.I.A. and Control is the person at the head of the agency rather than some kind of device.

Some of the other terms are less difficult to figure out (such as a mole and a honey-trap) but you have to have your wits about you simply to understand what is being said. But that's not all: trying to keep track of all the people coming and going is nearly impossible. The end credits list a cast of 44 people and these are just the “principal actors”.

Somewhere along the way I lost track of who the good guys were and which ones were the bad guys (or was it the other way around?) and so I left after two hours feeling totally overwhelmed and at a complete loss. Not a nice feeling I can assure you.

CLASSIFICATION
for violence, some sexuality/nudity and language.

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