2 stars (out of 4)

Released 2011

Based on the John LeCarre novel about British spies during the Cold War, this film adaptation is virtually impossible to follow unless you are familiar with the world of Cold War era espionage.

I watched this with sub-titles on, so at least I had some help learning the names of the numerous characters (eg. “Control” is the name of one of the spies).  Despite the fact that the casting director wisely chose actors with very distinctive faces, I still couldn’t keep track of which name belonged to which face, and, since off-screen characters are frequently referred to only by their names, this is a problem.

The story is told in a non-linear fashion, and there were several scenes in which I was so lost as to what was going on that, when the film finally reveals the significance of the earlier mysterious scene, I had completely forgotten it.

Add the above problems to the fact that there is very little movement in the film (I mean, literally, people move around slowly, if at all, and, being British, emote very little) and you have a strangely inert movie.  If the viewer could understand all the calculating that is presumably going on inside the characters’ implacable exteriors, I guess it could have been suspenseful.

I only know that there was a coherent story under this mess because I watched it with someone who had read one of LeCarre’s novels as well as other spy novels that deal with similar themes and he was able to explain many of the plot points that I had missed.

Still, a movie that cannot stand alone and requires extensive background knowledge for basic comprehension of its plot, is a failure.