Gary Oldman (long ago the screen incarnation of Sid Vicious) plays the rather sad, unassuming spy who seems quite comfortable operating in an atmosphere of mistrust. Shot in a subdued palette that mimes le Carré’s world of muted treachery, Smiley is haunted by his decades-earlier interaction with a shadowy Russian spy master. In trying to identify the mole, he sees betrayal as “an aesthetic choice as much as a moral one.” The stellar cast includes John Hurt, Colin Firth, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy. |