85
Metascore
42 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 100EmpireAngie ErrigoEmpireAngie ErrigoUtterly absorbing, extremely smart and - considering this is a sad, shabby, drably grey-green world of obsessives, misfits, misdirection, disillusionment, self-delusion and treachery - quite beautifully executed.
- 100Time OutKeith UhlichTime OutKeith UhlichThe Cold War is over, but director Tomas Alfredson (Let the Right One In) and his collaborators have brought those suspicion-fueled days to vivid life in this masterful adaptation of John le Carré's beloved 1974 spy novel.
- 90VarietyLeslie FelperinVarietyLeslie FelperinAn inventive, meaty distillation of Le Carre's 1974 novel, picture turns hero George Smiley's hunt for a mole within Blighty's MI6 into an incisive examination of Cold War ethics, rich in both contempo resonance and elegiac melancholy.
- 88Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerSlant MagazineAndrew SchenkerOrder may be restored to the Circus, the "bad" elements weeded out, but in the jaundiced world the film has spent the last two hours so effectively delineating, the barriers between good and evil have been shown to be essentially meaningless.
- It is one of the few films so visually absorbing, felicitous shot after shot, that its emotional coldness is noticed only at the end, when all the plot twists are unraveled in a solid piece of thinking-man's entertainment for upmarket thriller audiences.
- 80TimeRichard CorlissTimeRichard CorlissAt two hours, the film version is a third the miniseries' length, requiring severe compression by screenwriters Peter Straughan (The Debt) and Bridget O'Connor, which they've accomplished smartly.
- Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the intellectual action flick of your dreams.
- 80Village VoiceJ. HobermanVillage VoiceJ. HobermanThe latest Tinker Tailor is, in some ways, more explicit regarding various characters' sexual proclivities than was the miniseries. It's also more concise, but what's lost is George's pathos.
- 75ReelViewsJames BerardinelliReelViewsJames BerardinelliTomas Alfredson's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy may be the best possible movie version of the story, but it illustrates that the big screen is not the ideal medium for a tale of this complexity.