Shrouded in ashen cigarette smoke, heavy silences, backroom intrigue, and horridly despondent early ’70s British interior décor, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy unfolds with maximum perplexity, ensuring that we will never be sure exactly what is going on. The 1974 source novel by John le Carré has been frequently described as “labyrinthine,” and when the BBC adapted it to the small screen in 1979 with Alec Guinness, they had the luxury of 350 minutes of running time. Screenwriters Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan, on the other hand, have tried to boil the novel’s narrative and emotional complexities down to just over 120 minutes, and although by all accounts they have successfully captured the tone and spirit of the novel, all of its plot strands feel either truncated or vague, giving us little to grab onto beyond the hazy tones of deceit and desperation.
I left the theater. So did a good many others. A complete waste of time. Nobody was sure exactly what was going on, so why go the distance.
Posted January 27, 2012 at 1:00 pm | Permalink
I wanted to like this movie but I wish I had done what the woman sitting next to me did after 45 minutes – left this yawn of a film. It is just so uninvolving as to make the extra 60+ minutes I endured a complete waste of time.
The information required to solve the case – complicated, intricate, and dense – comes in downloadable segments comprised mainly of flashbacks and innuendo. Actually it doesn't. That's what's wrong with the film. There is not enough information given the audience to solve the case. We don't solve the case. Which takes all the fun out of the movie experience.
We do not go to the movies to be mocked!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment