Hours before I saw Tomas Alfredson’s Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, I had been sleeping in my car parked on the streets of Boston, as I hadn’t slept the night before and was stranded in the city all day.  I describe my situation not only because I constantly need pity from everyone all the time, and to imply nonchalantly that I have a wild social life. I also wish to convey the message of how well Alfredson’s quiet, intense film kept even this sleep-deprived, unruly, sexy, popular, socialite alert and glued to the screen.

Set in the Cold War era of 1970s England, the film centers on semi-retired British secret service agent, George Smiley (Gary Oldman, The Dark Knight), as he searches for a Soviet mole working at the top of British Intelligence (The Circus).  Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Firth, Mark Strong, Toby Jones and Ciarán Hinds all star as British Intelligence agents working for or against Smiley. 

This espionage drama involves very little typical espionage action.  No characters jumping off buildings, no awesome sex scenes, no chases on foot or in cars or in airplanes, no awesome sex scenes, no explosions, no epic fights, and no awesome sex scenes. However, it was thrilling and engaging all the same.  (Although, they really could have thrown in a couple awesome sex scenes.)  The film’s intensity derives from the slow-building tension that develops as the taciturn Smiley navigates his way through a murky world of double-crosses and clandestine operations.  And from Oldman’s pitch-perfect performance.

I described the film as quiet and intense purposefully, as Alfredson had described Oldman in an interview done before the movie’s release as possessing “a quiet intensity and intelligence” needed for his role.  Indeed, his performance matches the film’s tone perfectly.  You can in fact read the entire film through Oldman’s Smiley -- a weathered, distraught man who always seems to know everything and nothing at the same time.

That’s not to say the entire cast doesn’t perform excellently. Each actor has a touching personal story that brings an element of subtle and genuine humanity to the film. The love story between Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy, Inception) and his Soviet love, Irina (Svetlana Khodchenkova), is particularly affecting in its resolution.  It’s no small task for these actors to add that level of humanity to a film focusing on espionage on a grand international stage -- a situation from which the general audience is so removed.  

The only other Alfredson film I’ve seen is Let the Right One In (2008).  Apart from the genuine humanity apparent in both, I can see other striking similarities that highlight the best of the films.  Hoyte Van Hoytema, who does the cinematography in both, uses the environment to capture the mood.  In Let the Right One In, he uses the snowy landscape of Sweden to capture the frigid, detached loneliness of the primary characters.  In Tinker, he uses a colorless London, where secret meetings and covert dealings occur on top of immense buildings or in disused, decrepit houses, emphasizing the dark secrets hidden by the city’s most prominent and powerful officials.  And London’s gray gloom matches Oldman’s serious, but betrayed Smiley perfectly. 

Additionally, some of Alfredson’s most brilliant scenes come near the end of both films, where he focuses solely on the protagonists as a bunch of shit happens around them, isolating the audience with one character, as the suspense builds off screen.  In Let the Right One In, it comes during the infamous pool scene, where the camera lingers in near silence on the boy Oskar, who is being held underwater, while the final, bloody events of the film occur above water.  You never even get to see the bloodbath, and it’s still awesome.  In the revelatory moment of Tinker, we’re left alone with Smiley for a couple minutes in a hall of a rundown home where the mole operates, as we hear the muffled sounds of the spy returning to leak his secrets to the Soviets.  Then the reveal.  It’s an amazing technique that draws the audience into the tense moments of the films and for a minute you’re truly sucked into the anxious minds of the stars. 

Some of the best scenes in Tinker for me came during the seemingly mundane moments, primarily involving the character, Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch of BBC’s Sherlock), who is working as a double agent for Smiley against the Circus.  In two scenes particularly, he must steal files from records rooms inside the Circus.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve had so much experience nearly getting caught transferring porn from its safe place in my sock drawer to my backpack whenever I left my home for long periods of time, because I was afraid my parents would find it, but my palms were sweating, my heart racing during Cumberbatch’s thievery scenes.  So yeah, those moments will resonate with anyone who has had to steal clandestine information from highly secured government buildings, putting their entire careers, lives and the lives of their loved ones in mortal peril, and with perverts.

I could blame my lonely childhood and questionable morals for the anxiety I felt.  However, much as I do with all my confusing anxiety, I’d like to place the blame entirely on someone else: Cumberbatch.  He does a great job in this film, as the honest, anxious and endangered Guillam.  Behind Oldman’s Smiley, Cumberbatch’s Guillam is my favorite character.  One of the best threads of the film traces Guillam’s slow decent into the dangerous world of governmental conspiracy, where he must sacrifice everything, including his personal life and personal safety.  And one of the best moving moments comes when Smiley delivers the disheartening news to Guillam that he must set his affairs in order, in case he is killed.  Unfortunately, that includes Guillam breaking it off with his boyfriend.  You never meet the boyfriend, never see the two together, hear anything of their relationship, and you don’t even know how long they’ve been dating.  However, the scene where the boyfriend lays the keys on the table, and we watch Cumberbatch break down, really tugs a heartstring and ensures the audience that shit just got real.

Perhaps the only flaw with the film is the way it tackles its convoluted plot.  I’ve never read the novel the film was based on, so I don’t know how it unfolds on the page, but keeping up with the narrative of the film was a bit difficult.  It seemed like it needed some better editing and better flow.  I was stuck in a theater with tons of old people, and, apart having heard incredulous whispers and violent sobs when it was revealed Cumberbatch’s and Firth’s characters were gay, I also heard a few of them expressing their bewilderment at the cluttered narrative.  Unfortunately, it seems some people just expect a straight storyline.  Which is a shame, because Tinker’s unconventional storytelling may turn some people off from the film, even though it’s perfectly fine and they should finally accept and love it for what it is.  Why do you only like straight stories, you close-minded bastards?