Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Boy, is that a good title.

I'm sure it was a fine day for author John LeCarre -- sometime in the early 70's? -- when the title struck him. He was probably thinking of something else, maybe even working on the text of the novel, but in the back of his mind he was reciting the list of characters at the center of this story, the codenames of the four top intelligence chiefs in the British SIS:

Tinker. Tailor. Soldier.

...

Poorman.

That's right, Poorman. The list comes from a children's rhyme I have never heard of, and it runs "Tinker, tailor, soldier, poorman."

And what an awful title that would have made.

But one of those four characters is a spy, whom George Smiley, played by Gary Oldman in the new film version, is tasked with uncovering.

It's the central, relentless question of the movie:

Tinker, tailor, soldier, or poorman?

Which of these is a spy?

So LeCarre was turning the question over in his mind, probably for years: Tinker? Tailor? Soldier? Poorman? He said it over and over to himself. Then, one day (like I said, probably while he was actively thinking about something else), he said, "Tinker, tailor, soldier..."

...

SPY!

It must have hit him like a thunderbolt. What rhythm, what snap, what intrigue and allure. LeCarre had his title.

Almost forty years later we've got the movie Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, a smart, thick, atmospheric, authentic slow burn of a movie.

And I do mean slow.

Tinker is a thriller that moves through molasses.

There are lots of silences in the movie. There are lots of characters and lots of subplots. There are flashbacks.

It's a movie that could very easily have lost its way, if it didn't have two things going for it: 1) that central, driving, relentless question: tinker? tailor? soldier? spy? and 2) a really good bad guy.

The bad guy exists entirely off-screen, a la Kaiser Sose (or Sauron the Great!), but he exerts a monumental pull on the story. He is Karla, director of Soviet Intelligence. He is the chessplayer to end all chessplayers, the master manipulator, the unbeatable schemer. We never see his face.

Gary Oldman's weary, wary spyhunter has met the man, only once, many years ago, and he is haunted by the feeling that he revealed too much of himself in that meeting.

It's a dangerous thing to reveal something of yourself in the shadowy world of spycraft -- at least in the fictional version of said world, which is all we're concerned with here.

And that gives a necessary personal edge to the proceedings.

There was a danger that Tinker would come out like a Mission Impossible movie, just infinitely slower and with a less attractive cast -- nullifying the only two positive qualities of a Mission Impossible movie.

But the danger is deftly avoided. Tinker stays true to what it is: a grainy, dimly-lit, whispery journey into a world of complicated politics and even more complicated machinations. A world where personal relationships always get sacrificed at the altar of the espionage business. That's a sad thing, and everyone involved registers the sadness.

It may not be great, and it's certainly not exciting. But Tinker shows what you can achieve off the strength of a great title and a powerful central question.

Tinker?

Tailor?

Soldier?

Spy?








--spoiler alert--











Tailor!

SCORE

How Accomplished: 69/100

How Much I Enjoyed: 72/100