There is a
mole at the very top of the MI5 and is up to retired spy George Smiley the task
of discovering his identity.
This is not
a movie for the faint of heart or the easily distracted. The plot is extremely
complicated. Of course is possible to follow the movie without paying too much
attention to the details but the point of a movie like this is to pay attention,
to scrutinize closely everyone while trying to guess who is the aforementioned
mole and here we have a movie that actually reward this, a movie where every
tiny detail makes sense in the end. This is a movie for the thinking man.
Luckily
this movie is not simply a very big puzzle. The director, Tomas Alfredson of “Let
the right one in” fame, actually crafts a very good cinematic experience. Many
shots are really interesting, we spy conversations from behind a window, we
follow the path of a document in the cavernous halls of the MI5 head office,
every single frame is interesting and engaging. Considering how this story is
so complicated and convoluted this is really noteworthy.
This is also
a period piece, set in 1974 in the middle of the cold war, and every detail is
lovingly recreated. The author of the original book, John le Carre, was a real British
spy, and after a while we get sucked in an atmosphere of paranoia and suspect.
The cast is
impressive and reads like a Who’s who of the best talent around; John Hurt,
Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, but above everybody else is a towering performance from
Gary Oldman. Smiley is a very difficult role. A taciturn man, he speaks for the
first time 20 minutes in the movie, he raises is voice only once and so there
is no space for the usual histrionics that are normally the highlight of a performance.
Here instead Oldman succeeds in being more expressive by saying less, every
word that he speaks is loaded with meaning and implications.
A must see
experience, if somebody says that he understood the real identity of the mole
in the first 5 minutes you should punch him.
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