I was bored to tears. Literally, I was yawning so much that my eyes were watering. I'm sure if you were really into the genre it could appeal, but I just found it dull.
This is a very cerebral British old school spy film. More in line with late sixties early seventies Jean-Pierre Melville and William Friedkin than MI or Bourne. I enjoyed it very much. Stellar cast. Everyone turns in a good to great performance.
Spoiler The cliff notes version, a Russian spymaster (Karla) created a fictitious double agent that would feed the four British guys bogus or meaningless Russian intel. The four never met this source, only received info at the designated house via Polyakov, who they thought was a go between. They thought they were getting great intel. So good that they could exchange the intel with the Americans in exchange for the Americans giving the Brits their Russian intel. But instead of keeping the American intel secret, Colin Firth's character was sending it to Karla. So in this way Karla got access to American intel via the Brits, who were all unknowing except Firth. The movie suffered from constraints of time, had to explain things way too quickly and left things out. The old miniseries is better in this regard. I knew the plot going in and still found it confusing. The ending to the film was great. <iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/zGcp3_OT2-0#t=0m30s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Started off very confusing and convoluted but it gets better midway through as the puzzle is put into place. I followed along with the general plot but I had to read the wiki entry afterwards to get the little details.
I thought it was beautifully shot and well acted. Somewhat noir-ish. Plot actually made you think rather than just incepting the illusion of thought some other films did. What? The toughest thing is keeping track of names and lexicon. The way they had to compress it into film hurt this the most. A modern miniseries would've really suited it (and let me see those GORGEOUS sets for an extra couple of hours). The only characters you really get to know is Smiley. The others, at best, work as amusing diversions.
It may just because they seem to be in every commercial break, but I'm really tired of the commercials for this movie.
I just got back from it myself. Did you happen to watch it at Marq-E? I can appreciate a slow paced movie - don't get me wrong, but I had to force myself to be interested throughout this film. I actually followed the action better than I anticipated (I'm terrible with names, which doesn't help in this kind of movie), but it still felt so bland. I cannot recommend it.
Spoiler Oh okay. I understood everything except for Firth's characters point in doing it, which was giving American Intel back to the Russians. Makes a bit more sense now.
Saw it at River Oaks But I felt the same way. The names were a killer. During Oldman's monlogues/long lines of dialogue, I found myself tuning out and not even hearing what he was saying.
Spoiler The only clue was I saw was Firth's comment about how bad the West was getting, so perhaps he was turning communist.
