Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson, 2011)

Let the Right One In director Alfredson brings his superlative command of mood and tension to the film adaptation of le Carré's definitive Cold War counterespionage novel. Events necessarily have to be compressed from the original Alec Guinness-led 1979 seven-part BBC series, repeatedly bringing the risk of losing the thread, and the temptation to introduce Hollywood spy thriller time, place and character captions must have been there, but thankfully it's resisted: the cliched signposting would have shattered the meticulously crafted sense of time and place of a fusty, repressed and paranoid '70s England that permeates the construct from the peculiar dank locations to the understated and nuanced acting.
If truth be told, the opening half-hour drags with a lot of going in and out of drab buildings and little plot progression, and the search for the Soviet mole has limited resonance with almost everyone a potential Philby and little else concrete of universal interest at stake. But this is to judge it by the criteria of other modern spy films, from which it's a breed apart and not just because of the period: it's about layered atmosphere, not fast pay-offs, and scores highly on the level of the small gesture and single chosen word. It's also gratifying to see Gary Oldman, at the head of an impressive cast, move decisively away from his Hollywood pantomime roles to give a portrayal of the careworn Smiley which nods neatly towards Guinness's version without ever descending into caricature.

7/10