Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

If you prefer your spies in the vein of James Bond and Ethan Hunt, served up with a heavy dose of explosions, one-liners and improbable beauties, this isn't the spy movie for you.

Understated, stylish and supercool, this modish spy drama will only appeal to Americans who have a strong, embarrassing affinity for British things. And it wouldn't hurt if you have read the book, written in 1974 by real-life spy John le Carré. The book is long, and the movie presupposes a passing familiarity with le Carré's world, something most British people probably have.

Happily, I read the book last year, even before I learned that there would be a movie, one starring two of current cinema's most compelling actors, Gary Oldman and Colin Firth.

If you are a person who likes British things and subtlety, I would hate it if lack of prior knowledge hampered your enjoyment of such a great movie. So I've taken it upon myself to create a primer of the less-explained facets of the story.

• The action takes place at the Circus, a thinly veiled version of the MI5. The CIA is called the Cousins.

• The anonymous director of the Circus, Control (John Hurt), suspects that one of his five closest associates is a Soviet mole.
• Control orchestrates a rogue mission to Hungary to gain information about the mole's identity. This goes horribly awry, and ends in the ousting of Control and his deputy, George Smiley (Gary Oldman) -- our hero.
• "Karla" sounds like a lady's name, but it's the code name of the head Soviet spy, George Smiley's nemesis.
• Soon after, Control dies. After an interlude, Lacon (Simon McBurney), the politician who oversees the Circus, recruits Smiley to suss out the mole. Aiding him in this is Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), a mid-level Circus employee who is above suspicion. In the books, Guillam is a ladies man; in the movie, he's secretly gay.
• Smiley knows that the mole is one of four people: charming bisexual cad Bill Hadon (Colin Firth); Percy Aleline (Toby Jones), an insufferable bureaucrat now in charge of the Circus; Toby Esterhase (David Dencik), a sycophantic refugee from the Eastern Bloc; and Roy Bland (Ciarán Hinds), whose lefty, working-class background seems to conflict with his work to bring down the Commies.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is beautifully shot, making the Cold War look elegant and fashionable. And the story, which is really more about chasing a paper trail than old-fashioned spying, is surprisingly suspenseful. The big reveal is a bit of a letdown. I remember my jaw dropping when I got to that part in the book, but in the movie, the discovery of the mole's identity almost seems like an afterthought. That's the one fault I could find.

The one thing that makes this movie is Gary Oldman. Of course, we know him as a chameleon actor who can disappear (to the point of being completely unrecognizable) in roles as diverse as Sirius Black in the Harry Potters, James Gordon in The Dark Knights, Sid Vicious, Lee Harvey Oswald, Count Dracula and especially as the scary and gross Drexl Spivey in True Romance.

Dude could read the phone book, as they say.

As a spy, George Smiley is successful precisely because he is so unmemorable; he can disappear into a crowd, because he has no defining features. He's quiet and unassuming, which is not to say kind and gentle: Smiley can be ruthless and deceptive without thinking twice when he needs to be. How in the world do you make that character be fascinating -- instead of boring -- on the big screen?

You hire Gary Oldman, that's how.

There are many other fine performances in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but I wouldn't even be writing about it now if it weren't for Gary Oldman. Thanks to him, you don't even remember to notice the lack of explosions.