Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2011. 127 Minutes. Rated R

Quote: No, I don’t know her.

I’m speechless, It’s a miracle I made it all the way through.

How to rip this apart properly?  I’m proud to say I didn’t know anything about this movie, I didn’t see any previews and I don’t know what anyone else thinks about this movie. I don’t know if it did well, if it won anything, or what the general consensus is, so this is all unbiased.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – Focus Features

This movie SUCKED. It was the epitome of boring. I literally made some dinner about halfway through, ’cause I just needed to stop punishing my eyes. When I came back with the food, I resumed my viewing. It was so boring, I felt like the food was insulted.

This movie tells the story of British guys searching for a Soviet mole in the MI6. Seriously… that was it. It was putrid. No arch, no suspense, no nothing. I love everybody in this movie, too, which makes it worse. I expected that Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy and John Hurt would deliver. Alas, I was wrong. This has become one of my least favorite films ever, almost dethroning the long reigning champion “A Very Brady Sequel”.

The List

  1. Force me to invest

Sometimes what a dramatic film (or an action film) does, is it hooks you early with something maniacal. An act of violence, a big explosion, some sort of crime… something like that. They gave it a shot, I’ll admit it; it just didn’t work. The “said act” was not surprising or even slightly gripping. They didn’t force me to invest. They didn’t even try. For example… has anyone every seen Die Hard with a Vengeance? It begins with a bomb going off. BOOM. Everyone is hooked. Immediately.

  1. Throw me a curve ball

This movie was supposed to be a bad-ass spy film. Crazy Russians Mobsters  and British Intelligence around every corner?  It was none of that, it was mostly just people sitting in different chairs. Seriously, count the chairs in this movie, it almost out-numbered the amount of times I thought about shutting it off. There are over 30 chairs in the trailer for this film, and dude is sitting in a chair on the movie poster and the DVD cover.

Everything was easy to figure out, too. I pride myself, a movie guy, and I like to try to figure things out ahead of time, but this was so easy to figure out… I couldn’t even believe it.

There are five guys… one of them is a bad guy. (Spoiler Alert) The movie goes on and on trying to find clues and decipher jumbled ideas and flash backs that you won’t realize are flashbacks unless you stay very on top of things. In the end, one of them is a bad guy, and after many long discussions in different chairs, the big reveal is…  not all that revealing.

  1. How about a twist?

Something? A nuclear attack! Pirates! Donald Trump talking about China even, coming to the rescue to save the day? No. None of that. Chairs. People sitting in chairs, people thinking and talking in chairs. Most of them aren’t even on wheels. It’s a bunch of crap. No twist.

(end of The List)

I appreciate that this film did not do any needless things in a feeble attempt to entertain me. There is no gratuitous violence, or crude nudity forced into the wrong places. Don’t get me wrong, both of them are fine, but in the right spots, in the right movies–not in straight dramas like this that are simply supposed to be about acting. I will at least give them that, there were no stupid plot devices, but really… it needed something extra and just didn’t deliver. It’s so bad I came here today to tell you about it.

Author: Peter

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