I’d been massively looking forward to this re-make from a 1970’s classic TV series starring Alec Guinness. With its rather stellar British cast and with the wonderful glimpse into the cold war period, spies, espionage and all that. It had to be pretty juicy stuff!
Directed by Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson (Vampire film ‘Let the Right One In’) we are catapulted back to a time of extreme uncertainty, paranoia & ‘it’s time to pick a side’ mentality.
Our film mainly follows semi retired M16 agent George Smiley (Gary Oldman) in his quest to track down a Soviet sympathiser (the correct term being a ‘mole’) in the ranks.
The whole M16 operation is called ‘the Circus’ and when Control (John Hurt) narrows down their suspects to five likely lads within the organisation, George sets about digging into the world with which they have all been a part in an attempt to smoke the bugger out!
Mr Oldman is sensational, subtle, and cool; he crafts this role into a performance that will most certainly have him up for an Oscar. His supporting cast, John Hurt, Mark Strong, Cathy Burke, Tom Hardy & Colin Firth all play wonderful parts in making this an intriguing wonderfully told piece of filmmaking.
Tom Hardy is also worth mentioning as such a bloody great actor. He plays a more rogue agent who goes AWOL, but once tracked down by Oldman gives some vital clues to who the mole could be, they almost have a bit of an ‘act off’ together at one point which is totally captivating stuff!
The plot twists and turns throughout this picture (which at times) makes us work rather hard as an audience. You will (or at the very least I did anyway!) get a little lost at certain points. There is a great deal to follow here and I came out thinking I will almost certainly need to see this again, at the very least just to pick up on a view areas I wasn't 100% clear on.
The era is captured really well, from the smoky corridors of M16 to the grim and grotty back streets of London & Istanbul. You are taken on a journey here that takes it’s time, explores it’s characters and depicts our time and place with a beautiful accuracy that I’m sure any boring historian would blow his load over.
Go the Brits, The Circus and the Swedes.
8 Northern Thumbs out of 10.
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