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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
George Smiley, the aging master spy of the Cold War and once heir apparent to Control, is brought back out of retirement to flush out a top level mole within the Circus. Smiley must travel back through his life and murky workings of the Circus to unravel the net spun by his nemesis Karla 'The Sandman' of the KGB and reveal the identity of the mole before he disappears.
2011 · Directed by Tomas Alfredson · 127 min · Drama · Thriller · Mystery · Screenplay in the scene database · 6 frames
Tagline
How do you find an enemy who is hidden right before your eyes?
Plot
In November 1973, "Control", head of British intelligence ("The Circus"), sends field agent Jim Prideaux to Budapest to meet a Hungarian general and potential defector, who has offered to identify a mole installed by Soviet spymaster Karla amongst the Circus' senior leadership. Prideaux realises the meeting is a trap, attempts to leave and is shot in the back. Control and his deputy, George Smiley, are forced to retire, and Control dies shortly after. Sir Percy Alleline becomes the new Chief, with Bill Haydon, Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase as his inner circle. Despite Control's and Smiley's suspicions, the four had begun handling a high-level Soviet source ("Operation Witchcraft"), which Alleline believes will give the Circus access to American intelligence.
Alleline and Bland meet with Permanent Undersecretary Oliver Lacon, the senior civil servant responsible for the Circus, to discuss the ongoing cost of a secret safe house to meet the Witchcraft source. After the meeting, field agent Ricki Tarr, currently in hiding due to being connected to several deaths in Istanbul, telephones Lacon to inform him of a mole within the Circus. Aware that Control had a similar theory, Lacon asks Smiley to investigate. Smiley recruits Tarr's handler Peter Guillam and retired Special Branch Inspector Mendel to assist him.
After setting up a base in the Hotel Islay, Smiley has Guillam steal personnel records and copies of the Circus' slush fund accounts. He discovers several Control loyalists were ousted after Prideaux's shooting, as well as a record of payment made to "Mr. Ellis", one of Prideaux's identities, after the shooting. In Oxford, Smiley interviews former analyst Connie Sachs. Sachs had discovered evidence that Soviet cultural attaché Alexei Polyakov was actually an undercover military officer, and suspected his true role was to run a mole in London; Alleline had scoffed at her findings and sacked her.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: Peter Straughan, Bridget O'Connor
- Cinematography: Hoyte van Hoytema
- Edited by: Dino Jonsäter
- Music: Alberto Iglesias
- Production design: Maria Djurkovic
- Produced by: Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, Robyn Slovo
Cast
- Gary Oldman as George Smiley
- Colin Firth as Bill Haydon
- Tom Hardy as Ricki Tarr
- John Hurt as Control
- Toby Jones as Percy Alleline
- Mark Strong as Jim Prideaux
- Benedict Cumberbatch as Peter Guillam
- Ciarán Hinds as Roy Bland
- David Dencik as Toby Esterhase
- Kathy Burke as Connie Sachs
Production
- Country: Germany, United Kingdom, France
- Language: English, French, Hungarian, Russian, Turkish
- Studios: StudioCanal, Working Title, Karla Films, Paradis Films
- Budget: $30,000,000
- Box office: $81,515,369
- Themes: london, england, budapest, hungary, espionage, spy, cold war, 1970s, traitor, kgb, secret agent, mi6
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