Friday, February 24, 2012

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy


A thriller based on the novel with the same name by John LeCarre. I have not read the book yet. The story is about British Intelligence("Circus") spies during Cold War.1973. Smiley ,an  intelligence officer was forced to come out of his forced-retirement to investigate on mole in British Intelligence.

Smiley and his team mates were forced to retire after their failed attempt to get secrets  from Poland.Their agent was shot and they were replaced by Percy Allenline as the chief with Billy Haydon as his deputy and Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase as their close aides.They tradeSoviet's secrets code named "Witchcraft" with American.But in reality they are giving more secrets to Soviet .

Now Simley's job was to find who is the mole in the 'circus' hierarchy.Peter Guilligan ,an intelligence officer was assigned to work with him.Smiley interviewed all his team mates and collected all sort of materials.Through Jim Prideaux, who was their agent who went to Poland and was shot, since then he was fleeing, Smiley came to know about the reason behind Jim's trip to Poland and the people involved in it.His purpose of the visit was to find the name of the mole.Control, the chief of Smiley had code named them "Tinker"(Allenline),"Tailor"(Haydon),"Soldier"(Bland),"Poorman"(Esterhase) and "Beggarman"(Smiley).



Smiley found that Allenline and others were meeting the Russian agent at a particular place,the rest of the story is about their arrests.

Gary Oldman as Smiley was impeccable.Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guilligan too did well.Good to see Collin Firth in Haydon's role, he did superbly.Screenplay by Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan was spot on - gripping.intelligent and realistic. Director Tomas Alfredson did not try to do much with the original story from the novel , he just followed it and came out shining, well done.Music by Alberto and Cinematography by Hayte were other highlights of the movie.

This movie requires your full concentration and attention for two hours, but worth doing it.Overall a good movie.

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