…the film is squash diluted to homeopathic traces.
I watched the trailer again and understand why I was excited to see the film. The golden grey tones, the primo cast, the building drama of the score. The movie, though, conveyed this excitement minimally. I knew intellectually that Smiley was circling the big four but I got no sense of him drawing closer, nothing of stealth or menace, no lives in the balance. I think it’s because we see so little of the suspects, Ciaran Hinds lines were so scanty he didn’t need his equity card. Tinker and chums remained strangers to me, guessing who-was-it became a blindfolded throw at a dartboard.
I did feel tension when Benedict was rummaging in the forbidden files but that’s because we’re on knitwear exchange terms and I love his Sherlock. Tom these-lips-are-wasted-on-a-man Hardy and Svetlana most-beautiful-woman-ever-to-have-a-protruding-mole Khodchenkova compelled as they benefited from a solid chapter for their story.
We saw plenty of Smiley but it was unenlightening owing to:
1. much of it being micro-scenes. (four seconds of George in a taxi; two seconds of him marching a London pavement; three of him propped up on a sofa)
2. Oldman’s immobile visage. He barely got his lines through his lizardy lips.
This is part of my series “Watching Colin Firth films several years later than every other human on the planet“.
What Would Sherlock Do? 