When people ask me how my reviews go from my head to the page, a criteria about how you have to back up something you claim the movie does, or doesn’t, always is addressed on my end.  For instance, you can’t just say, “this movie is as painful as an enema;” you have to be able to explain why it is annoying as a tube going up your ass.

This is one of the rare times where yours truly just wants to say the following: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is extremely boring.  It just is.  Its 127 minutes of absolutely nothing happening for the most part.  By the time this plodding script gets to something quasi-stimulating, it already lost you nearly an hour ago.

Spy conspiracies usually have some kick to them.  Even the ones that are quiet and take their time will almost always have a jolt or two in them while they’re building toward the climax.  Well, unless you’re last year’s The American that is.  The only element about this flick is how it can give Nyquil a run for its money.  Better yet, one will fall asleep faster watching this than getting put under by a dentist.

The plot isn’t all that unique from what we’ll call “administrative spy mysteries” (ones with seldom action and a lot of old-man conversations).  A group of senior British intelligence agents (played by Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, David Denick and John Hurt) run the “Circus” during the Cold War Era.  After an operation in Hungary involving agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) goes wrong, a former agent in George Smiley (Gary Oldman) comes out of retirement almost a year later to investigate why this occurred.  His light research leads him to the conclusion that one of the senior agents is a possible mole for the Russians.  As he speaks with other agents involved (played by Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch and Kathy Burke) with that particular mission, he inches closer to who or whom may be leaking information to the Soviets.

Had the makings to be riveting and intense, but sadly, this flick never comes close to that.  As the screenplay begins jumping back-n-forth depicting the time when the Hungary operation went south, to his present investigation, it becomes a chore to keep up with where we’re at regarding the story and characters.  The goal is to portray a realistic account and avoid using all the gimmicks and flash found in the majority of spy-thrillers.  And while that could make for an engrossing story – on paper – this is almost too thorough and intelligent for the cinematic screen.

This is essentially Gary Oldman walking around in a trench coat having chats with all the players above; some of which who get a minor backstory, while others are just used as place-holders.  And while it is an admirable effort by Oldman leading this accomplished cast, only Tom Hardy provides a glimmer of life in the dialogue department.

The funny or ironic thing; a movie that fires off only a couple rounds is in fact an effective killer…in the entertainment department.

Overall, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy reveals nothing interesting or compelling to encourage anyone to seek this out.  Unless you’re sleep deprived.

RATING: 2 out of 5

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There has been a huge amount of interest in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ever since Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and other equally talented actors joined the film last year, and the teaser trailer gave the indication we had a quality film on our hands.

Today Studio Canal and Working Title released a great new international trailer for the film, and it has the kick-ass ‘Frankenstein’s Monster’ track from X-Men: First Class as the backdrop.

Watch below:

Based on John Le Carre‘s Cold War novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy follows a retired MI6 agent (Oldman) who is called back to ferret out a Soviet mole hiding among the highest ranks of the MI6. The cast also includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, Svetlana Khodchenko, Toby Jones, John Hurt, Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke.

Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director behind Let the Right One, is directing a script by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon).

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy will be released September 16 in the U.K., and an awards-friendly November 18 in the U.S.

Read similar posts to Great new trailer for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy at Filmonic

There has been a considerable amount of interest in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy ever since Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and other equally talented actors joined the film last year.

Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director behind Let the Right One, is directing a script by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), and today interest reached a new high with the release of the first trailer.

Watch below:

Based on John Le Carre‘s Cold War novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy follows a retired MI6 agent (Oldman) who is called back to ferret out a Soviet mole hiding among the highest ranks of the MI6. The cast also includes Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciaran Hinds, Svetlana Khodchenko, Toby Jones, John Hurt, Stephen Graham and Kathy Burke. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy will be released September 16 in the U.K., and an awards-friendly November 18 in the U.S.

Read similar posts to First trailer for Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy at Filmonic

Relativity Media announced today that they’ve finally made their mind up and have decided to call Tarsem Singh’s 3D Greek fantasy Immortals. Up until now the film has been going by the name War of the Gods, however IMDB and various other places have been calling it Dawn of War.

Immortals is a cool name, although I thought War of the Gods would have been a more epic title. I suppose they didn’t want to be confused with the God of War movie currently in development, and Dawn of War is a popular video game which could have caused conflict.

Immortals is currently filming in Montreal and stars Henry Cavill as Theseus, Freida Pinto as oracle Phaedra, Mickey Rourke as King Hyperion and Kellan Lutz as Poseidon. Recently it was announced that Stephen Dorff, John Hurt, and Isabel Lucas had joined the cast. Dorff plays a master thief named Stavros who joins Theseus (Cavill) in his battle against the immortal Greek gods. John Hurt will play the earthly manifestation of Zeus, who acts as a mentor and teacher to Theseus, and Isabel Lucas (hot robot lady from Transformers 2) will play his daughter Athena.

Last week Relativity Media set the release date for November 11th 2011.

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John Hurt appeared in the very first Harry Potter film back in 2001 and he will be returning nearly ten years on to reprise his role of Ollivander in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part II. His character appeared briefly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, however he was being abducted by Death Eaters and had a bag over his head, so it probably wasn’t John Hurt.

Hurt spoke to Rotten Tomatoes about playing the wand shop-keeper again, and he also had a mini-rant about the British film industry.

JH: I’ve filmed one, which actually is the last one, and now I’ve got the penultimate one to do which is in November, and that wraps it all up. It’s a big loss for Britain in terms of having a big studio movie here, but it’s not representative of our culture in terms of the films that we make. I am convinced that though Pinewood and Shepperton — the big studios — playing host to big movies is very important, our film business is in the independent world. Of that I’m convinced…

Do you think the big franchise movies shooting in the UK give a false impression of the health of our industry? All these productions move in and hire local talent, but they aren’t British films.

JH: No, they’re not British films. Even Harry Potter isn’t a British [franchise]. We gave it to Warners, we just sit and collect. That always infuriates me. I do think huge areas of the industry are being neglected and we’ve lost the ability for middle-budget films. When we did have a stronger industry — and not just a business — we did have room for middle-budget films. They’ve gone out of the window, as they’ve done in America as well, but a $20m picture would be wonderful to make every now and then. We could do a lot for that.

But it’s like any country, if you don’t have a lot of money to spend. And it’s interesting seeing how much money gets spent on Harry Potter. It’s quite absurd, really. I watch it and think it’s just the same as Hollywood. I look around and you’ve got three costumes there, none of which are likely to be worn, and they’re all replicas of each other. It’s a vacuous waste of money and it drives me insane.”

I’ll have to agree with Hurt on this one. If you watch any behind the scene feature on any big movie you see lots of waste. Before Half-Blood Prince came out I saw a behind the scenes TV special on the joke shop set which Fred and George Weasley own in the film. Warner Bros. had craftsmen and designers working for weeks on background props that weren’t even shown on-camera. The scene itself lasted less than a minute. However, I suppose they did provide work for local people who needed it.

The ‘British’ thing is also quite annoying. Harry Potter was created by a British author, the movies star British actors with mostly British directors, producers and crew, and it’s shot in Britain. Yet when each movie makes $900+ million 95% of is goes into the bank accounts of Warner Bros. in America. I appreciate that without Warner Bros. ploughing $150+ million into each film they wouldn’t have happened in the first place, however it’s a shame the movies will have no major long lasting impact on the British film industry. The industry doesn’t have a lot of money floating around and it could have benefited from some Harry Potter coin.

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