Thursday, January 12, 2012

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY

“TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY” (Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Ciaran Hinds, John Hurt & many more)

Today’s ‘Worst Person In The World’ award goes to Keith Olberman, who spent an entire segment of his show ‘Countdown’ singing the praises of this movie, which he hailed as possibly the best movie ever made. I was expecting to see a film that clearly belonged in the Top 10 of 2011 because Olberman wasn’t the only one harping “Tinker, Tailor...” as a taut espionage thriller. It’s going to end up being closer to the Bottom 10 than the Top 10 and I don’t think the let down from high expectations is the reason – this film is exceedingly bland; about halfway thru I renamed it “Tinker Tailor Snoring Spy”.
I was also encouraged when I saw that John le Carre, author of the original novel, was one of the producers – that’s usually a good sign that they ‘did things correctly’.
I came away with the impression that the film was made for those who had seen the British miniseries version of the story in 1979 because I had no idea what was going on – who was who – and why were they doing what they were doing and where they were doing it. Olberman did warn me that the film bounces back and forth in time and the best way to tell which ‘period’ they were in was to notice George Smiley’s glasses, since director Tomas Alfredson decided not give the audience any assistance in figuring out where and when in time the current scene was taking place.
But when all was said and done and the ‘Mole’ was revealed – easily figured out by everyone in my party – there was no ‘taut’ thrilling finale; the ending like the rest of the film was bland and boring.
Gary Oldman played George, the ‘Spy’ of the title (though they ALL were spies) and if ever an actor slept walked his way thru a film, Gary’s performance here rivals the Nicolas Cage in almost every single one of his hundreds of roles of the past decade – the difference being we expect mediocrity from Cage, NOT from Oldman.
The concept was intriguing; John Hurt, playing ‘Control’, the boss of all the spies working for ‘The Circus’, discovers he has a mole in his organization and calls all of the suspects together to hopefully get the others to flush out the traitor. His right hand man, George, is pretty much put in control by Control but Smiley later learns that he too is a suspect.
After a half hour or so of ‘set ups’ to nowhere, a character named Ricky Tarr appears and tells George an interesting story about an encounter he had with a Russian girl named Irina – the story is set in England in 1973 so Cold War fears are prominent.
We are told of a ring of Russians called ‘Witchcraft’ but we are never really told as to what their mission is or who they actually are. Just the word ‘Witchcraft’ is supposed to make adrenaline pump thru our veins and strike fear in our hearts – it did nothing for me.
Mark Strong makes an early appearance as spy ‘Jim’ who is shot and killed during a meeting in Budapest. I mention him only because he finally returns to some of the promise he showed earlier in his career. To give the film a bit of praise – the acting is above average – and even though Oldman never changes his expression; whether celebrating at the Circus’ Christmas party or discovering fellow spy, Bill (Colin Firth) is diddling his wife, Ann – Smiley’s countenance remains as stoic as a statue. That couldn’t have been easy, yet at the same time made George come across as an unfeeling robot.
Another piece of faint praise; the movie was set in the 70’s and it not only had the look of that decade, I kept being struck by the fact that it ‘felt’ as if it had been filmed in the 70’s... You tell me if that’s a good thing or not.
Toby Jones plays feisty little spy Percy who acts like he’s in charge and can do whatever he wants. In the latter part of the film, the others start talking about Allaline; ”Where is Allaline? Did you meet with Allaline?” I had no idea who Allaline was until the credits rolled and they revealed that Percy’s last name was Allaline.
The film becomes a horrible parade of one bland float after another with no cohesive story being put together until the final scenes – and then, whether it was due to indifference or lack of surprise, I really didn’t care who the mole was, I just wanted this movie to end.
I tried to watch closely, to pay attention to the clues so I could cleverly tell my wife and ex-teacher why everything that happened in the movie happened – but along the way, I simply lost interest.
An espionage thriller? Not hardly – it’s just about a bunch of whining English twits that start bawling like babies when they’re outted as traitors to her majesty.

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