Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
I've never read LeCarre, but I thought Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was an excellent flick. Why didn't you like it?
TM
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Spoiler Alert
One of the things I didn't like about it was that it really kind of wandered off away from the novels. They took story arcs from three different books and threw them together in a way that didn't make sense. The ending of the movie, where Smiley comes home to Ann, was a scene that came at the end of
Tinker, Tailor, but it is almost forgotten by the time Smiley rises triumphant at the end of
Smiley's People.
I also didn't like the way that Oldman played Smiley. He was too fastidious. He lacks both the desperation and the ruthlessness of the Smiley in the books. They could have made three great movies. Instead, they took major plot points out of three novels to cram into two hours dribs and drabs of some of the best cold war-era spy fiction ever written.
They also skipped over the class-driven relationships between the characters. By eliminating the backstories of Prideaux, Jerry Westerby, Ricky Tarr, and Peter Guillame, they laid waste to some of my favorite reading.
And, last but not least, there is Alec Guinness. His portrayal of George Smiley was head and shoulders above Gary Oldman's.
I realize a lot of this is fairly personal to me. I am not saying i was a bad movie. In fact, I watched it again yesterday instead of doing any writing. I wanted a full exposition of the trilogy in all of its shades of dark and light, with all of its texture. The movie they made was a Cliff's Notes version, and that is what disappointed me.
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