The movie introduces them one by one, each played by a familiar face in a film cast with iconic British actors. "Tinker" is Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), "Tailor" is Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), "Soldier" is Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), "Poor Man" is Toby Esterhase (David Dencik) and "Beggarman" is George Smiley (Gary Oldman), Control's trusted lieutenant. If you're wondering what happened to "Spy," that would be whoever turns out to be the mole.
The film, set mostly in London in the early 1970s, is bathed in browns, shadows and pale lighting. All of the men show a lot of wear, none more than Control; John Hurt's face is weary and deeply lined, his eyes set deep out of the way of cigarette smoke, but lest you think that is entirely because of aging, I interviewed him in 1984 while he was filming "1984," and he looked much the same then.
As the film opens, he has learned that a Hungarian general who would know the mole's identity may be a possible defector. In a muted, serious conversation that will set the film's tone, he assigns Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) to go to Budapest and talk to this man. That mission goes wrong and serves to alert the Soviets -- although the mole would already know Control was engaged in sniffing him out. In the kerfuffle that follows, both Control and Smiley are dismissed from the service. Some time later, Control is dead from a heart attack, and Smiley is recalled from "retirement" to continue the search for the mole.
Now follows a series of paranoid meetings in sealed rooms, snatched conversations in obscure corners of London and flashbacks that may cast light on Smiley's investigation, although we cannot yet know for sure. All of this is superbly atmospheric in the hands of director Tomas Alfredson, who made the sober and effective vampire movie "Let the Right One In." His camera is implacable, its moves sinister, the rooms are filled with smoke and fear, and the characters warily circle around — well, each other, really.
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