Review of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) by Julian T — 31 Aug 2014

A monumentally overrated film. Convoluted, self-insistent and slow, it somehow manages to have way too much going on all while doing nothing. I know alot of people would hear my opinion and say 'Well it was clearly over your head'. No, I understood everything the film presents, and while it is very complicated, it isn't hugely confusing. What is confusing is why everyone seems to insist upon its greatness.

The primary praise of the film seems to be its acting. Gary Oldman's performance has become something of a legend. Let me preface this by saying I am a huge Oldman fan. I think he's one of the finest actors alive today and surely one of the most overlooked. That said, his performance here is absolutely nothing special. He displays no range of emotion, no growth within the character, no nothing. He is flat and monotone throughout. The reaction to this performance echoes to me Natalie Portman's performance in 'Black Swan' the year earlier. I can't comprehend how such thoroughly tone deaf and flat-lined roles are being viewed as Oscar contenders. Defenders of Oldman's role talk about 'the subtlety of his character'. That's another way of saying 'the underwhelming emotional qualities of his character'. The rest of the cast is full of names and low on performance. I doubt I'll ever see the brilliance of Colin Firth, but I like Tom Hardy and John Hurt quite a bit and all are below their average performances here. Again not sure why the cast has received such acclaim outside of the fact that they are all recognizable names.

The plot itself is a more complicated and less exciting version of a story you've heard 53 times before. There's a mole inside the British Intelligence Agency and the former top agent is brought out of retirement to smoke him out. Despite such a simple backbone, it rapidly spins out of control as it segments off into various subplots, confusing flashbacks which are never distinguished from present time, and scatter-shot scene chronology. The confusing structuring of the story isn't helped by the abnormal amount of code names, spy jargon and British slang. It is just an off-putting mixture of elements that did not combine favorably in my eyes. This movie is very confusing not because of plot intricacy but because of bad scene sequence, shoddy use of chronology and coded language.

In addition to my previously mentioned gripes, the film is just boring. I felt no building tension or feelings of impending conflict, it was just a plodding and monotonous march from one scene to the next. I can recall perhaps two scenes that snapped me to attention, but they were short lived and trivial in the scheme of the story. Nothing that mattered to the story long term was exciting or even entertaining.

There were of course positives to be found here. Great camera work and cinematography highlight the film as far as I'm concerned. A good score works to enhance what little tension is generated. I can't deny that it does bring a level of sophistication and intelligence to the screen which is always welcome, but it just can't translate it across the barrier of its composition.

When analyzing the film as a whole, it is largely underwhelming. It is not exciting, it is not engaging, it is not much of anything really. What it is is an overblown and pretentious example of the Academy making something of nothing to maintain a level of elitism over us dumb regular movie-going folk (see 'Sideways') in an effort to remind us that they know more about movies than we do.