Most Hollywood thrillers feature a character turning to another and saying, "As you know, the mole has been leaking secrets for six years..." Tinker Tailor does the opposite. It drops you into the middle of a conversation between tired, paranoid men who already know everything. They never explain the acronyms, the hierarchies, or the past operations.
Alec Guinness as Smiley. It is slower, but it explains everything in detail. After that, the 2011 film becomes a beautiful, streamlined remix. tinker tailor soldier spy hard to follow
Before we diagnose the difficulty, here is the skeleton of the story: It is the early 1970s, the height of the Cold War. British intelligence (known as "the Circus") suspects it has a mole—a double agent working for the Soviet Union. The mole is one of the top four men in the service, code-named: (Percy Alleline), Tailor (Bill Haydon), Soldier (Roy Bland), and Poorman (Toby Esterhase). George Smiley, a veteran spy forced into retirement after a botched operation in Hungary, is secretly brought back to identify the traitor. Most Hollywood thrillers feature a character turning to
The characters speak in a specialized jargon that isn't always explained. If you don't know your Scalphunters from your Lamplighters , you'll lose the thread quickly. What it Actually Means MI6 Headquarters (located at Cambridge Circus) Mole A double agent burrowed deep in the organization The Cousins Scalphunters The "dirty work" section (assassinations, blackmail) Wranglers Signal analysts and codebreakers 3. The "Thinking Man’s" Pacing Alec Guinness as Smiley