Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

I read John Le Carre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” long ago, and was stoked for a film version. That I barely remembered the plot helped. I was not bogged down as I watched Gary Oldman almost wordlessly soar to his best screen performance as the aging/defeated/solemn George Smiley, a spy who realizes his life was pissed away trying to dig up shit intel on the Russkies. The story: Oldman’s Smiley is tasked with finding a mole in The Circus, MI:6. His suspects include fellow spooks so high up, they hold onto power with an Iron Fist, their noses up the rear of the American CIA. As with many of 2011’s best films, this is a story of a person taking stock of his life and lost chances. This is a dark, grimy, and quiet film, startled with bloody violence. You can feel this film waft off the screen -- the dust and tweed jackets, and stink of a rotting body. The mood is by director Thomas Alfredson, the woefully hurried complex screenplay by the late Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan, a married couple. This is no feel-good “Mission: Impossible” thriller, but a spy-mood killer, and a damn good one. A-