Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Focus Features | Release Date: December 9, 2011 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
85
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 42 Critic Reviews
Positive:
40
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Rick GroenDec 15, 2011
This superb remake has the inevitable look of a period piece, a smoke-filled rendering of things past. However, thanks to Tomas Alfredson's direction, a taut screenplay, and a uniformly brilliant cast, the film also retains its contemporary relevance. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleAmy BiancolliDec 15, 2011
Screenwriters Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan have clarified a few things that needed clarifying, camouflaged a few things that needed camouflaging - and gently tugged some passive flashbacks into the active present. It's a cagey adaptation. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsDec 15, 2011
This is one of the finest achievements of the year, and while it's easy to lose your way in the labyrinth, I don't think Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is most interesting for its narrative pretzels. Rather, it's about what this sort of life does to the average human soul. Read full review
100
Time OutKeith UhlichDec 6, 2011
The 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. Read full review
100
EmpireAngie ErrigoNov 29, 2011
Utterly 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. Read full review
95
NPRElla TaylorDec 9, 2011
The screenplay, by Peter Straughan and his late wife, Bridget O'Connor, is debonair. Alfredson's mastery of tone and ambiance is flawless. The bloodletting is brief and necessarily appalling, the comedy mordant: I guarantee you will never sing along to "Mr. Woo" in quite the same way again. Read full review
95
MovielineStephanie ZacharekDec 8, 2011
The movie's intricacy, and the way it finds its way into the emotional lives of its characters via (and not in spite of) that intricacy, is what makes it extraordinary. Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy challenges audiences to believe in craftsmanship again. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubKeith PhippsDec 7, 2011
After establishing an atmosphere of nearly unbearable dread, Alfredson keeps thickening and chilling it. Read full review
91
IndieWireEric KohnDec 7, 2011
I had to see the new version twice to realize that there's so much to appreciate about this multilayered production. Read full review
90
SalonAndrew O'HehirDec 8, 2011
What contemporary relevance you may find in Alfredson's chilly, marvelously acted and gorgeously composed new film of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy - is a highly individual question. Read full review
90
The New York TimesManohla DargisDec 8, 2011
A pleasurably sly and involving puzzler - a mystery about mysteries within mysteries. Read full review
90
Los Angeles TimesKenneth TuranDec 8, 2011
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an enormously impressive piece of work. Read full review
90
Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternDec 8, 2011
This version of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy turns on the presence of Mr. Oldman, and he is an actor of great experience and accomplishment who has finally found a film that fully deserves him. Read full review
90
VarietyLeslie FelperinNov 29, 2011
An 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. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleKimberley JonesDec 22, 2011
One wishes for a chewier whodunit – there just aren't enough clues for the viewer to work with – and the reveal of the mole is perversely anticlimactic. But maybe that's just stickling. We always knew Smiley'd get his man. Read full review
88
Charlotte ObserverLawrence ToppmanJan 5, 2012
The film requires close attention, especially while it jumps back and forth in time for the first half-hour, but all the pieces lock into place tightly by the end. Read full review
88
St. Louis Post-DispatchCalvin WilsonDec 23, 2011
Yes, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is often hard to follow, perhaps overestimating the audience's ability to keep track of what's going on and why. But it's a well-crafted film that wears its old-fashionedness with pride. Read full review
88
Boston GlobeTy BurrDec 15, 2011
In its attention to detail and awareness of betrayals both political and human, "Tinker Tailor'' is a movie for grown-ups. Read full review
88
New York PostKyle SmithDec 9, 2011
Thanks to his (Oldman) mastery, and Alfredson's, no film this year left me hungrier for a sequel. Read full review
88
Rolling StonePeter TraversDec 8, 2011
Oldman gives a performance that is flawless in every detail. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineAndrew SchenkerDec 3, 2011
Order 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. Read full review
83
Portland OregonianShawn LevyDec 22, 2011
A smart and engaging entertainment. Read full review
83
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerDec 12, 2011
It's a beautifully modulated performance of a man whose presence, at times, seems on the verge of vanishing – not a bad attribute for a spy. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanDec 7, 2011
A puzzle of a highly rarefied order. At times it's enthrallingly clever and subtle; at others it's borderline incomprehensible. Read full review
80
Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzDec 21, 2011
It's just as accurately described as a bunch of British guys sitting around acting. But what actors! The cast includes Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Mark Strong,Ciarán Hinds and Toby Jones. Read full review
80
New York Magazine (Vulture)David EdelsteinDec 12, 2011
I've heard it said that Le Carré's work lost its savor with the end of the Cold War, which is as dumb as discounting "Coriolanus" because Romans and ­Volscians are no longer killing each other. Le Carré's subject was the national character and what happened to it under threat and in the absence of public scrutiny. It could hardly be, mutatis mutandis, more contemporary. Read full review
80
SlateDana StevensDec 8, 2011
The film's best moments are the quiet ones in which Oldman's ironically named Smiley provides the story with its wise, unsmiling soul. Read full review
80
New York Daily NewsElizabeth WeitzmanDec 8, 2011
Even those who adored Alec Guinness as the small-screen George Smiley will appreciate Gary Oldman's perfectly attuned turn as a Cold War spy drawn back from forced retirement. Read full review
80
Village VoiceJ. HobermanDec 6, 2011
The 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. Read full review
80
Boxoffice MagazineJames RocchiDec 1, 2011
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the intellectual action flick of your dreams. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDeborah YoungNov 29, 2011
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. Read full review
80
TimeRichard CorlissNov 29, 2011
At 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. Read full review
75
Miami HeraldConnie OgleJan 7, 2012
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is the anti-Bourne of espionage movies, a deliberate, cerebral, grim and utterly absorbing film that makes covert operations appear as unsexy as the Bourne films made them seem fast-paced and thrilling. Read full review
75
Philadelphia InquirerSteven ReaDec 22, 2011
Even if you get lost - in the spyspeak, in the codes, in the comings and goings of grim-faced men with satchels full of documents they should not have - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is worth getting lost in. Read full review
75
Washington PostAnn HornadayDec 15, 2011
As a stylistic and narrative throwback, Alfredson's adamantly un-thrilling procedural reminds viewers of an era when viewers allowed themselves to be entertained by a good yarn about a few colorful or at least colorlessly compelling characters. Read full review
75
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertDec 14, 2011
I enjoyed the film's look and feel, the perfectly modulated performances, and the whole tawdry world of spy and counterspy, which must be among the world's most dispiriting occupations. But I became increasingly aware that I didn't always follow all the allusions and connections. On that level, "Tinker Tailor" didn't work for me. Read full review
75
USA TodayClaudia PuigDec 8, 2011
The film employs a largely British cast that is perhaps the most impressive ensemble of any movie this year. Read full review
75
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliDec 6, 2011
Tomas 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. Read full review
67
Tampa Bay TimesSteve PersallJan 4, 2012
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is boldly dull in protest to modern movie tastes, and that alone may earn it more praise than it deserves. Read full review
63
New Orleans Times-PicayuneMike ScottJan 7, 2012
All of the pieces fall into place by the third act -- or most of them, anyway. But Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is such a cold, unemotional film that getting there is a chore, muting the payoff. Read full review
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