Director: Tomas Alfredson
Writer: John Le Carre
“In the bleak days of the Cold War, espionage
veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover a Soviet agent
within MI6” according to this webpage.
In the beginning, there are six men who meet
to discuss the leaking of information with Russia. It has been discovered there
is a double agent among the group. This leaves the Tinker (Toby Jones), the Tailor
(David Dencik), the Soldier (Ciaran Hinds) and the Spy (Colin Firth) sitting at
a table discussing this problem. The entire movie is about discovering which
man is the double agent.
In one street scene, people are sitting around tables. Two
men are waiting for a third man. The street is narrow, the buildings are high and not much sunlight is able to penetrate this village. It is a rather depressing scene. A woman appears in a second story window,
cautiously looking at the scene below. Suddenly she draws back and for a few
heartbeats, the suspense builds until gunshots are heard. Who has been shot? What is going on? These are the thoughts than ran through my mind.
One of the interesting things about this
film was the chess pieces. There were five chess pieces on a desk and each one
had a picture of a man on them, the same four men in the group at the table and
George Smiley played by Gary Oldman. He plays his role with severity, aloofness
and silence; his job is to ferret out the mole. Several times, we see Smiley
pushing the pieces around and even switching the pictures from one chess piece
to another. It reminded me that
sometimes we are just pawns in the game of life, being pushed to and fro
towards a winning or a losing game. We do not have a lot of control as to what
is happening to us; we are just being pushed around.
Since this movie was originally a six-hour
long movie, reducing it to 127 minutes took some cutting. A narrator could have
filled in some of the silences with the history of who these men were, what
they were doing and why they were doing it. It would have been much easier to follow
and understand the plot. The movie was
half over before I could get a grip on the story line.
The producer uses lighting effects and music
to depict the dark and light aspects of the story. However, most of the scenes
are dark throughout this movie. Anytime music is used, the loud and soft tones
are used to show different emotions.
Not being
accustomed to suspenseful movies, I was at the edge of my seat. Sometimes, I
could not keep from voicing my alarm at the action. So for those who like
suspense, action and a vague plot, this movie is a must-see.
