In 1973, "Control", head of British intelligence ("The Circus"), sends field agent Jim Prideaux to Budapest to meet a Hungarian general and potential defector. In exchange for protection and extraction, the general has offered to identify a mole installed by Soviet spymaster Karla amongst The Circus' senior leadership. When Prideaux realises the meeting is actually a trap, he attempts to flee and is shot in the back. Control and his deputy, George Smiley, are forced into early retirement and Control dies shortly after. The Minister replaces Control and Smiley with four senior officers from Operation Witchcraft, an operation handling a high level source named Merlin within the Soviet political system. Sir Percy Alleline becomes the new Chief, Bill Haydon his deputy, and Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase his lieutenants.
Alleline and Bland meet with Permanent Undersecretary Oliver Lacon, a senior civil servant with day-to-day responsibility for the Circus, to request the purchase of a secret safe house to meet Merlin at. Shortly after the meeting ends, field agent Ricki Tarr telephones Lacon to inform him of a mole within the Circus. Tarr is currently in hiding and on the Circus' 'wanted' list due to being connected to several deaths in Istanbul. Aware that Control had a similar theory, Lacon reaches out to Smiley through Peter Guillam and asks him to investigate. Smiley agrees and recruits Guillam and retired Special Branch Inspector Mendel to assist him.
After setting up a base of operations in the Hotel Islay, Smiley has Guillam steal personnel records and copies of the Circus' slush fund accounts. He discovers several Control loyalists were ousted after Prideaux's shooting, as well as a record of payment made to one "Mr. Ellis", one of Prideaux's identities, after the shooting. Smiley travels to Oxford to interview Soviet analyst Connie Sachs. Sachs reveals that she discovered evidence that Soviet cultural attaché Alexei Polyakov was actually a military officer, and that she suspected his true role was to run a mole through the Soviet embassy in London. Sachs reveals that Alleline suppressed her findings and that she was forced out of the Circus soon after, suggesting that Polyakov is Merlin.
Back in London, Smiley discovers Tarr sheltering in his house and interviews him about his operation in Istanbul. Tarr was assigned to trail Boris, a Russian trade delegate who he quickly discovered was actually KGB. After Tarr witnessed Boris assault his wife and fellow agent Irina, the pair began a sexual relationship that culminated in Irina offering to trade a mole for asylum in the UK. Hours after Tarr cabled London about the existence of a double agent, however, the local station chief was murdered and Irina abducted, confirming to Tarr that the mole existed. Smiley sends Guillam to steal the duty officer's logbook for the night Tarr contacted London from the Circus' records department. Guillam is unexpectedly brought before Circus leadership and told that Tarr is a traitor who has been bought by the Soviets, prompting him to assault Tarr at Smiley's house. However, Smiley finds that the logbook pages for the relevant night have been removed, confirming the mole is trying to silence Tarr.
That night, Smiley recounts his only meeting with Karla to Guillam. Whilst working under the name "Gerstmann" in 1955, Karla was captured and traded to Russia by the Americans. Believing he would likely be executed upon his return, Smiley traveled to Delhi to recruit him. However, his constant urging for Karla to think of his wife only revealed Smiley's weakness: his love for his wife, Ann. A chainsmoker, Karla listened silently, stole a lighter given to George by Ann, and returned to Russia.
Following up on the missing pages, Smiley contacts former duty officer Jerry Westerby, who tells him of how Prideaux's shooting sent Control into shock. Hoping to find George, Westerby had contacted Ann; Haydon then arrived and took command of the operation. Guillam wonders how Haydon could have learned of the emergency, before Smiley informs him Haydon was having an affair with Ann. Smiley follows this up by locating Prideaux, who is in fact alive and working as a French teacher at a public school. Prideaux explains that his Budapest mission was to identify the mole and relay one of five code-names to Control. Alleline was "Tinker", Haydon "Tailor", Bland "Soldier", Esterhase "Poorman", and Smiley "Beggarman". However, he was captured, interrogated and tortured by the KGB instead, during which he witnessed Irina's death. During his interrogation, Karla personally visited and asked how close Control was to identifying the mole before trading him back to the Circus.
With all the testimony he has gathered, Smiley realises that Witchcraft is actually a ruse controlled by the KGB and informs both Lacon and the Minister. The Circus and Witchcraft's lead officers believe Polyakov is providing sensitive Russian military and political intelligence. In reality, however, Polyakov is trading false or insignificant intelligence as a cover to meet the mole. The actual objective of Witchcraft has been to repair the Circus' relationship with the CIA and re-establish the sharing of intelligence after Prideaux's shooting, enabling the mole to leak these materials to Karla. The mole has been trying to find and silence Tarr out of fear Control's investigation would re-open under Smiley and result in him connecting the mole to Polyakov and Witchcraft, identifying him.
Now certain that the mole is one of the four men within Witchcraft, Smiley and Guillam send Tarr to the Paris Station to cable the Circus and draw the mole out. To ensure his compliance, Smiley agrees to Tarr's request to trade the mole for Irina, despite knowing she's dead. Smiley and Guillam surprise Esterhase as he leaves the Circus and drive him to an airstrip. There, they threaten to deport him unless he provides the address of the safe house, which he does. Smiley and Guillam wait at the safe house for the mole to alert Polyakov that Tarr is about to blow their cover. The mole is revealed to be Haydon, and Smiley arrests him at gunpoint.
The Circus holds Haydon at its training and debriefing facility, Sarratt. Smiley visits him to inform him he will be traded for British operatives held in the Soviet Union, after which Haydon asks Smiley to settle several ongoing sexual relationships with various men and women for him. He agrees and Haydon informs him that Karla ordered him to seduce Ann in order to cloud Smiley's judgement. He also confirms that he was tipped off by Prideaux, a long-time friend and suggested lover who suspected the mole could be Haydon, before the latter went to Hungary. As a result, Haydon was able to inform Karla and prevent Prideaux being killed at the hands of the KGB. Prideaux, however, blames Haydon for allowing his torture.
Before Haydon can be traded, Prideaux infiltrates Sarratt with a hunting rifle and shoots his friend underneath his eye. The bullet forms a bloody teardrop that Prideaux watches from a distance before Haydon collapses. Ann returns home, and Smiley returns to the Circus as its Chief.
The project was initiated by Peter Morgan when he wrote a draft of the screenplay, which he offered to Working Title Films to produce. Morgan dropped out as the writer for personal reasons but still served as an executive producer.[3] Following Morgan's departure as writer, Working Title hired Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor to redraft the script. Park Chan-wook considered directing the film, but ultimately turned it down.[4]Tomas Alfredson was confirmed to direct on 9 July 2009. The production is his first English language film.[5][6] The film was backed financially by France's StudioCanal and had a budget corresponding to $21 million.[7] The film is dedicated to O'Connor, who died of cancer during production.
The director cast Gary Oldman in the role of George Smiley, and described the actor as having "a great face" and "the quiet intensity and intelligence that's needed". Many actors were connected to the other roles at various points, but only days before filming started, Oldman was still the only lead actor who officially had been contracted.[8]David Thewlis was in talks for a role early on.[9]Michael Fassbender was in talks at one point to star as Ricki Tarr, but the shooting schedule conflicted with his work on X-Men: First Class; Tom Hardy was cast instead.[10] On 17 September 2010, Mark Strong was confirmed to have joined the cast.[11]Jared Harris was cast but had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; he was replaced by Toby Jones.[12]John le Carré appears in a cameo as a guest in a party scene.[13]
The Párizsi Udvar ("Paris Court") in Budapest, setting for the Hungarian café scene
The production filmed in Budapest for five days. Exterior shots included at Fisherman's Bastion. The café scene in which Jim Prideaux is shot in the interior hall of Párizsi Udvar Hotel.[17] The events which take place in Czechoslovakia in the novel were moved to Hungary, because of the country's 20% rebate for film productions.
The production filmed in Istanbul for nine days, shortly before Christmas.[7]
The production reunited Alfredson with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and editor Dino Jonsäter, with whom he had made his previous film Let the Right One In.[18]
Post-production and music
The film took six months to edit. The final song in the film, Julio Iglesias' rendition of the French song "La Mer", set against a visual montage of various characters and subplots being resolved as Smiley strides into Circus headquarters to assume command, was chosen because it was something the team thought George Smiley would listen to when he was alone; Alfredson described the song as "everything that the world of MI6 isn't". A scene where Smiley listens to the song was filmed, but eventually cut to avoid giving it too much significance.[19][20]
The film premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival on 5 September 2011.[23]StudioCanal UK distributed the film in the United Kingdom, where it was released on 16 September 2011.[24] The US rights were acquired by Universal Pictures, which owns Working Title, and they passed the rights to their subsidiary Focus Features. Focus planned to give the film a wide release in the United States on 9 December 2011 but pushed it to January 2012, when it was given an 800 screen release.[25]
The film was released in France on 8 February 2012 under the title La Taupe (meaning "The Mole").[26]
Critical response
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy received critical acclaim. Rotten Tomatoes reports an approval rating of 83% based on 229 reviews, with an average rating of 7.80/10. The site's critics' consensus states: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a dense puzzle of anxiety, paranoia, and espionage that director Tomas Alfredson pieces together with utmost skill."[27]Metacritic calculated an average critic score of 85/100 based on 42 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[28]
Jonathan Romney of The Independent wrote, "The script is a brilliant feat of condensation and restructuring: writers Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor realise the novel is overtly about information and its flow, and reshape its daunting complexity to highlight that".[29] David Gritten of The Daily Telegraph declared the film "a triumph" and gave it a five star rating,[30] as did his colleague, Sukhdev Sandhu.[31] Stateside, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone wrote, "As Alfredson directs the expert script by Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor, the film emerges as a tale of loneliness and desperation among men who can never disclose their secret hearts, even to themselves. It's easily one of the year's best films."[32] M. Enois Duarte of High-Def Digest also praised the film as a "brilliant display of drama, mystery and suspense, one which regards its audience with intelligence".[33]
Writing in The Atlantic, le Carré admirer James Parker favourably contrasted Smiley with the James Bond franchise but found this Tinker Tailor adaptation "problematic" compared with the 1979 BBC mini-series. He wrote: "To strip down or minimalize le Carré, however, is to sacrifice the almost Tolkienesque grain and depth of his created world: the decades-long backstory, the lingo, the arcana, the liturgical repetitions of names and functions".[34]
Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York named Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the fourth-best film of 2011, calling it "a visually stunning adaptation with a stellar cast."[35] In 2020, Uhlich named it the ninth-best film of the 2010s.[36]
Box office
The film topped the British box office chart for three consecutive weeks[37] and earned $80,630,608 worldwide.[38]
While doing press for Working Title's Les Misérables film adaptation, producer Eric Fellner stated that fellow producer Tim Bevan was working with writer Straughan and director Alfredson on developing a sequel to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Fellner did not specify whether or not the sequel would be based on The Honourable Schoolboy or Smiley's People, the two remaining Smiley novels in Le Carré's Karla trilogy.[47] While doing press for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014, Oldman stated that talk of a sequel, an adaptation of Smiley's People, had since disappeared; while also stressing that he would still like to see the film produced.[48]
In July 2016, Oldman said that a sequel was in its early stages, stating, "There is a script, but I don't know when we will shoot."[49] It was reported at the time that a script based on Smiley's People had been "greenlit" by Working Title Films.[49]
In December 2021, Alfredson said that a film sequel to the 2011 film was unlikely; the rights having reverted to Le Carré's estate, who were planning to reboot Smiley on television. Alfredson expressed an interest in directing Oldman in a future TV miniseries adaptation of Smiley's People but he thought that the moment had likely passed.[50]
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