Tomas Alfredson directs Gary Oldman, Colin Firth and Tom Hardy in this espionage mystery where a fired intelligence expert must figure out if the Russians have a mole in his old outfit.

A small confession: I have tried to finish John le Carré’s landmark thriller three times over my life and never gotten more than halfway through it. Let The Right One In director Alfredson recreates the mundanity, sadness and mistrust that I struggled with on the written page perfectly. His vision of Seventies London and the sad little bureaucrats who play games with each other’s lives is a seedy world of grime, dust and beiges. He populates it with the very cream of British screen acting. Everyone on top form, none more so than Gary Oldman in a career best as Smiley, a cog of coiled suspicion. All making for an endlessly rewatchable whodunnit.

9

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