Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

John le Carré's 1974 Cold War spy novel—adapted once before in the BBC's superior 1979 miniseries starring Alec Guinness—comes to the big screen with Oscar-nominated Gary Oldman in the lead role of George Smiley. In 1973, Control (John Hurt), who runs Britain's MI6, known as The Circus, dispatches a field agent, Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong), on a secret mission to Budapest to talk a Hungarian general into defecting because he knows the identity of a traitor within the highest ranks of the British Secret Intelligence Service in London. After Prideaux is captured, Control narrows the list to a handful of senior operatives, but after he succumbs to a heart attack, an undersecretary (Simon McBurney) summons Smiley out of retirement to discover which one is the Soviet spy. Each of the suspects has a code name culled from a nursery rhyme: Percy (Toby Jones) is Tinker; Bill (Colin Firth) is Tailor; Roy (Ciarán Hinds) is Soldier; and Toby (David Dencik) is Poorman. Smiley's name was Beggarman, serving as Control's second-in-command; new to the investigation is Smiley's cavalier assistant, Peter (Benedict Cumberbatch). Juggling too many characters and confusingly ambiguous subplots, Swedish director Tomas Alfredson lets scenes drone on, making for ponderous pacing in this dreary, retro glimpse behind the Iron Curtain. Still, with three Academy Award nominations, this should be considered a strong optional purchase. [Note: DVD/Blu-ray extras include audio commentary by director Tomas Alfredson and star Gary Oldman, a behind-the-scenes featurette (13 min.), deleted scenes (6 min.), and trailers. Exclusive to the Blu-ray release are interviews with Oldman, Alfredson, costars Colin Firth and Tom Hardy, author John le Carré, and co-screenwriter Peter Straughan (56 min.), as well as bonus DVD and digital copies of the film, and the BD-Live function. Bottom line: a fine extras package for an uneven adaptation.] (S. Granger)