January.  The notorious dumping ground of films that weren’t good enough to warrant any kind of award recognition the year before, and aren’t groovy enough to be a fun ride for Summer blockbuster season.  I’m not talking about movies that had an “awards release” late in the prior year.  They’re just cheating the system, but I’m all for it if that means the good stuff continues to trickle into the multiplexes for a few extra weeks.

But then there are the wild cards; the movies released for a hiccup in the prior year but have no real business appearing in Best Movie lists.  These are the films that you’re supposed to like if you know what’s good for you.  If you don’t?  Well, guess you’re not in the club.  And guess I’m not in the club when it comes to Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy; as a book it was a striking look at Cold War espionage.  As a movie it just left me cold.

Pity poor retired spies.  Just when they think they can fade away, they get pulled right back in.  Or something.  George Smiley is one of those guys.  He did a lot of bad things for the good of Her Majesty’s Service, and does that service let him relax?  Nooooo.  He’s tapped to figure out who is dropping the dime on covert activities, something that has led to all sorts of permanently bad things happening to people in and around the British Secret Intelligence Service/SIS (the U.K.’s CIA).

So George goes about trying to figure out what’s going on, but everything seems to be just out of reach.  I feel his pain.  As I watched the movie unspool, the groovy mid-20th Century hipness (and godawful clothes — oh how I loved seeing all that plaid and polyester), spooky Spooks and exotic locales all got washed away in a sea of grey, cloudy boredom.  Is there a lot to take in?  Oh you bet.  At 400 pages, John le Carre was able to create a living, breathing sense of paranoia in the book this film is based on.  Here, director Tomas Alfredson relies on a handout given to moviegoers describing the various ins and outs of “The Circus” (the SIS).  Lordy how I hope they give ‘em out during regular showings, because folks are gonna wish for something — anything —  to focus on.

The stars here are like a Who’s Who of British acting powerhouses; Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Ciarán Hinds, the lovely character actor Toby Jones….  But sadly, not even the usual gorgeousness of Colin Firth (as SIS bigwig Bill Haydon) could break through my ever-building sense of ennui.  Pity, since it feels as if these fine actors all gave their best effort.  But as with Shame, simply waving an interesting premise under a moviegoer’s nose isn’t enough.  The audience has to be connected, drawn in, to the goings on, or else it’s a wash.

I wanted to pull Alfredson aside and tell him that even though this is a movie about espionage, the plot doesn’t need to be such a bloody secret.  Remind him that he made the eerie, brilliant Let The Right One In.  Say to him that he’s better than his latest effort.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy makes the machinations of thousands of intelligence operatives in the Cold War era look positively dull as dishwater.  All I could think about is how badly I wanted to leave the theater; it takes a special level of suck to get me to that point.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy hit it right on the head.

Bret Easton Ellis has been catching some serious flack for his tweets about this movie — my favorite is “I would have loved the use of Beyond the Sea during the final minutes of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy [sic] if I had a clue as to what was going on.”  But he’s spot on with is assessment.  Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy is a muddled, boring mess that can’t be saved, no matter how many wonderful performances it has hidden within.