Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Steelbook) DVD+Blu-ray

This triumphant remake of le Carré's cold war tale sees Gary Oldman as Smiley leading an exemplary cast. Elegant cinematic solutions to complexity make this a must-see, says Milo Wakelin.

There can be few drama series more revered than John Irvin’s 1979 BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and few actors more beloved than Alec Guinness, who delivered a career-crowning performance as the mild-mannered spy, George Smiley. To remake the former and recast the latter could have been a betrayal to make even Burgess and Maclean blush.

Director Tomas Alfredson will know the feeling all too well - an American remake of his brilliantly original vampire drama Let The Right One In (2008) was announced before production had finished. As it turned out, Let Me In (2010) was a rare example of a remake that worked, and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy, which has already won rave reviews and numerous nominations, is a triumphant example of another.

Casting helps, and the ensemble includes established heavyweights such as John Hurt, Colin Firth, Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones, talented newcomers Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, and a rare, delightful appearance from Kathy Burke. Overseeing them all is Gary Oldman, crueler and more reptilian than Guinness’s sphynx-like portrayal of a spy who is called out of retirement to hunt down a traitor inside the British Secret Service.

The BBC series coincided with the public exposure of Anthony Blunt, giving Le Carré’s Cold War intrigue added pertinence. This adaptation has the feel of period piece, a costume drama, even, in which every detail of late 70s Britain is meticulously recreated (Maria Djurkovic’s outstanding production design was recently recognised at the British Independent Film Awards).

In recent years, filmmakers have catered to fans of Tolkien, Rowling and whoever’s responsible for the Twilight books by pedantically plodding through each and every plot point. So it’s a relief that Alfredson and screenwriters Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor have found elegantly cinematic shortcuts around Le Carré’s material. Here, Prideaux's desperate forest escapade is replaced by a Hitchcockian sequence set in a Czech café; Ricky Tarr's surveillance of a Russian agent and his wife evokes Rear Window, and the mole's fate is played out, ingeniously, in a poignant close-up. The result is a taught, engaging thriller that still retains the distinctive slow-burning tension of the original.

Milo Wakelin on 8th December 2011
Author of 103 reviews