Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
“Somewhere inside British Intelligence, one of their own is working for the enemy.”
Director
Tomas Alfredson
Release
16 September 2011
Runtime
127 Minutes
Certificate
15
Synopsis
British Intelligence sends agent Jim Prideaux to Budapest on a secret mission. It goes disastrously wrong. Prideaux is shot, the operation collapses, and the consequences reach all the way to the leadership of the Circus. Control is forced out. George Smiley leaves with him. But Control had been pursuing something far more dangerous than a failed operation. He believed a Soviet mole had infiltrated the highest level of British Intelligence. After Control's death, Smiley is secretly approached and asked to investigate. The suspected traitor is believed to be one of a small group of senior Circus figures. Percy Alleline. Bill Haydon. Roy Bland. Toby Esterhase. Men who have spent their careers protecting Britain's secrets are suddenly the people Smiley must investigate. Working quietly outside the organisation, Smiley begins reconstructing events through files, witnesses, memories and conversations. The deeper he looks, the clearer it becomes that Soviet spymaster Karla has been playing an extraordinarily patient game. Finding the mole won't require car chases or explosions. It will require Smiley to recognise which of his former colleagues has been lying to everyone around him.
The Movie Trailer
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a Cold War espionage thriller starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley, a quietly brilliant intelligence officer brought out of retirement to investigate the possibility that a Soviet mole has infiltrated the highest levels of British Intelligence.
After a disastrous operation in Budapest, senior figures inside “the Circus” — Britain's intelligence service — are forced from their positions.
Smiley is among them.
But information later emerges suggesting that Control's suspicions may have been correct.
Someone near the top of the organisation is secretly working for Soviet intelligence.
Smiley is brought back in from the cold to discover who.
The suspects are men he knows.
Men he worked beside.
And one of them may have spent years betraying everything the Circus exists to protect.
Working Title's synopsis likewise centres on retired intelligence veteran Smiley being secretly recalled to uncover a high-ranking Soviet mole embedded inside MI6.
THERE'S A MOLE
The Enemy Is Already Inside the Circus
The central threat in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy isn't somebody attempting to break into British Intelligence.
They're already inside.
Worse still, they've risen high enough to gain access to the organisation's most valuable secrets.
That turns Smiley's investigation inward.
The people under suspicion aren't unknown enemy agents. They're respected intelligence officers who have spent years working together.
Every conversation therefore has another meaning.
Every friendship becomes potentially compromised.
And every piece of intelligence has to be reconsidered through the possibility that someone trusted has been feeding information directly to Moscow.
GEORGE SMILEY
Gary Oldman's Spy Doesn't Need a Gun to Control the Room
George Smiley is almost the opposite of the conventional cinematic secret agent.
He doesn't burst through doors.
He rarely raises his voice.
He watches.
Gary Oldman's performance makes Smiley's restraint one of the film's greatest strengths. While everyone around him talks, argues and attempts to control the situation, Smiley absorbs information.
A hesitation matters.
A forgotten detail matters.
A story that doesn't quite fit matters.
His investigation progresses because Smiley understands something fundamental about intelligence work.
People reveal considerably more than they realise when someone is patient enough to listen.
TRUST NO ONE
The Cold War Becomes a Battle Between Friends
The mole investigation isn't merely professional for Smiley.
These are people he knows.
Some are friends. Some are rivals. Some have been part of his life for years.
That makes uncovering the truth considerably more painful than identifying an anonymous enemy.
The Soviet operation succeeds because intelligence agencies ultimately depend upon trust.
Documents can be secured.
Buildings can be protected.
Codes can be changed.
But eventually somebody has to trust the person sitting beside them.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy turns that vulnerability into the centre of its Cold War story.
The most dangerous person in the Circus isn't necessarily the man who looks suspicious.
It's the man everybody stopped thinking they needed to suspect.