Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 2011 Cold War espionage film directed
by Tomas Alfredson. The screenplay was written by Bridget O'Connor and
Peter Straughan, based on John le Carré's 1974 novel of the same name.
The film, starring Gary Oldman as George Smiley, along with Colin Firth,
Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch,
and Ciarán Hinds, is set in London in the early 1970s and follows the
hunt for a Soviet double agent at the top of the British secret service.
The film was produced through the British company Working Title Films
and financed by France's StudioCanal. It premiered in competition at the
68th Venice International Film Festival. It was a critical and
commercial success, and was the highest-grossing film at the British box
office for three consecutive weeks. It won the BAFTA Award for Best
British Film. The film also received three Academy Awards nominations:
Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, and for Oldman, Best
Actor.
The novel had previously been adapted into the award-winning BBC TV
miniseries Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979).
Plot
In October 1973, "Control", head of British
intelligence ("the Circus"), sends agent Jim Prideaux to Budapest to
meet a Hungarian general wishing to defect. Prideaux is shot and
captured. Amid the international incident that follows, Control and his
right-hand man George Smiley are forced into retirement. Control dies of
illness.
Percy Alleline becomes the new Chief, with Bill Haydon as his deputy,
and Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase as key lieutenants. Despite Control and
Smiley's misgivings, their successors had already begun a secret
operation—"Witchcraft"—to obtain Soviet intelligence, which is being
exchanged with the CIA for US intelligence.
Smiley is brought out of retirement by Oliver Lacon, the civil servant
in charge of intelligence, to investigate a claim by Ricki Tarr, a
British spy, that there has been a long-term mole in a senior role in
the Circus, as Control had suspected. Smiley chooses a trustworthy
agent, Peter Guillam, and retired Special Branch officer Mendel to help
him. He interviews Connie Sachs, who was sacked by Alleline after
deducing that Alexei Polyakov, a Soviet cultural attaché in London, was a
spy.
Tarr tells Smiley that, on a mission to Istanbul, he had had an affair
with Irina, a Soviet agent. She wanted to reveal the name of a mole in
the top ranks of the Circus, but when Tarr reported this to London, they
ignored him and ordered him straight home, while Moscow promptly
kidnapped Irina. Concluding that the mole had intercepted his message,
Tarr went into hiding, suspected of defecting and murdering the British
station chief. Smiley sends Guillam to steal the Circus logbook for the
night Tarr had called: he finds the pages for that night have been cut
out, supporting Tarr's story.
Smiley interviews Prideaux, who after brutal interrogation was exchanged
by the Soviets but sacked from the service. Prideaux says the purpose
of the mission to Hungary was to get the name of the mole. Control had
codenamed the suspects "Tinker" (Alleline), "Tailor" (Haydon), "Soldier"
(Bland), "Poorman" (Esterhase), and "Beggarman" (Smiley himself).
Smiley learns that Alleline, Haydon, Bland, and Esterhase have been
meeting Polyakov—the "Witchcraft" source—at a safe house, where Polyakov
gives them supposedly high-grade Soviet intelligence in exchange for
low-grade British material, to help him maintain his cover with the
Soviets. However, the mole is passing substantive material, including US
intelligence, to Polyakov, his handler, whilst Polyakov's material has
just enough substance to persuade the CIA to share information with the
British.
Smiley blackmails the location of the safe house out of Esterhase, whose
exile status makes him vulnerable to deportation. Smiley then has Tarr
appear at the Paris office, implying he knows who the mole is. The mole
meets Polyakov at the safe house, where Smiley arrests him: he is Bill
Haydon.
The Circus plans to exchange Haydon with the Soviets, but he is killed
by Prideaux, who was implied to have been Haydon's lover and betrayed by
him in the Budapest incident. Smiley returns to the Circus as its new
chief.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinker_Tailor_Soldier_Spy_(film)
