Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 2011

Kathleen Murphy, MSN Movies: A meticulously visualized anatomy of melancholy, this challenging movie freezes you to the edge of your seat, adrenalized with terror and pity. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: The story, skillfully mined from Mr. le Carre's labyrinthine book and set in 1973, is a pleasurably sly and involving puzzler - a mystery about mysteries within mysteries. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out: Immerse yourself in the world Alfredson creates, a paranoiac's nightmare of cautiously opened doors, enigmatic glances and soundproofed rooms inhabited by men in suits with shady motives. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: It's a treat to be back in Le Carre's world, where amid the tangle of plots and counterplots there are moments of lucidity when you sit up and say, "I've got it now!" Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: This version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" turns on the presence of Mr. Oldman, and he is an actor of great experience and accomplishment who has finally found a film that fully deserves him. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" has a murkiness to it that perfectly fits a spy film; you need to pay attention, or the story will slip away into the shadows. Read more

Keith Phipps, AV Club: After establishing an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread, Alfredson keeps thickening and chilling it. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: These guys make proper English diction as compelling as a gunfight, and "Tinker Tailor" as satisfying as any shoot-'em-up using real bullets instead of words to get its point across. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: In its attention to detail and awareness of betrayals both political and human, "Tinker Tailor'' is a movie for grown-ups. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy begins to seem phlegmatic after a while. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Alfredsen made the excellent vampire thriller "Let the Right One In," and his knack for brackish, enveloping atmosphere is rare indeed. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: The filmmakers don't try to jazz up the proceedings with a lot of then-and-now equivalencies. At the same time, it is implicit here that spy operations today are essentially the same, with only the names of the players and antagonists changed. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: Ultimately, though, it is very much Oldman's film, thanks to a restrained tour de force performance. Smiley is weathered, worn and beaten down by life, but he's also a quiet, sure force of something that resembles good. Read more

Entertainment Weekly: A movie of deceptions within deceptions and clues that glide by in a murmured flash. It turns the very process of figuring things out into a vision of the world. Read more

William Goss, Film.com: Stakes more personal than political [keep] Alfredson's chilly approach from leaving viewers out in the cold entirely. Read more

Deborah Young, Hollywood Reporter: It is one of the few films so visually absorbing, felicitous shot after shot, that its emotional coldness is noticed only at the end, when all the plot twists are unraveled in a solid piece of thinking-man's entertainment for upmarket thriller audiences. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: This is a film to which very close attention must be paid, but the rewards of doing so are considerable. Read more

Connie Ogle, Miami Herald: A deliberate, cerebral, grim and utterly absorbing film that makes covert operations appear as unsexy as the Bourne films made them seem fast-paced and thrilling. Read more

David Thomson, The New Republic: The movie is riveting in the exact sense of the word: We feel nailed to the screen in the impossible task of working out what is going on-let alone why it matters. Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: Something in the drama has been dulled, and I was almost bored. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: A story about friends selling out friends, of wives betraying husbands, of everyone lying to anyone to gain an edge, an advantage, an extra bit of cash. Read more

Ella Taylor, NPR: Alfredson offers no concessions to hindsight, no lessons for today. Instead, he's kept faith with le Carre's bleak, romantically elegiac vision of a moment in 20th century history at once glorious and doomed. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Alfredson - taking an impressive step into the mainstream after 2008's wonderful Swedish thriller "Let the Right One In" - remains faithful to his source in both subject and spirit. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post: The cast is uniformly excellent, but as the ringleader of the Circus, Oldman owns the proceedings. In his limitless constraint - his commanding torpor - he is the equal of the magnificent Alec Guinness in the miniseries. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: Just watching Gary Oldman and his trenchcoated brethren march down the damp, ill-lit streets of Cold War London is enough to make you shiver. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Tomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy may be the best possible movie version of the story, but it illustrates that the big screen is not the ideal medium for a tale of this complexity. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: This is an elaborately constructed, sometimes maddeningly convoluted but brilliantly layered thriller. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" looks, sounds and feels exactly right. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy emerges as a tale of loneliness and desperation among men who can never disclose their secret hearts... It's easily one of the year's best films. Read more

Christy Lemire, Associated Press: This is a grim, methodical world ruled by drab, mistrustful geeks who have come to relish their power, but Alfredson navigates it fluidly and keeps the many complicated pieces moving with quiet ease. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: Even Alberto Iglesias' old-school symphonic score and Hoyte Van Hoytema's chiaroscuro cinematography aren't quite enough to provide cover for Tinker Tailor's rushed incoherence. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: "Tinker" radically -- superlatively -- condenses John Le Carre's classic novel, which could scarcely be bounded by seven hourlong episodes in the 1979 BBC adaptation. Read more

Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: It's a well-crafted film that wears its old-fashionedness with pride. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: This superb remake has the inevitable look of a period piece, a smoke-filled rendering of things past. However, thanks to Tomas Alfredson's direction, a taut screenplay, and a uniformly brilliant cast, the film also retains its contemporary relevance. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: The screenplay is a marvel of exposition, offering a parade of characters (and their code names), international incidents, and alliances and double-crosses without ever leaving viewers baffled as to who's doing what to whom, and why. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: At two hours, the film version is a third the miniseries' length, requiring severe compression by screenwriters Peter Straughan (The Debt) and Bridget O'Connor, which they've accomplished smartly. Read more

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: This spy story is all about the journey - the process - and the byways of the route, not the grand finale. This film's superb cast, script and direction threaten to make that journey equally as thrilling as Le Carre's book. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A movie of chain smokers and whisperers, of grey skies and glum expressions, of rattling tea cups and rotary-dialed telephones. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Tinker Tailor requires close watching, but viewers are rewarded with a moody, layered and involving thriller. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: An inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel, pic turns hero George Smiley's hunt for a mole within Blighty's MI6 into an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: Best known for Let the Right One In, the bleak tween vampire drama remade here as Let Me In, Alfredson is strong on chilly atmospherics. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: It's a 1970s story told in 1970s style, an unrepentant un-reboot so old school that it feels subversively new. Read more