Jackson Lamb, spy veteran and Slough House head in Apple TV’s viciously funny espionage thriller, “Slow Horses”, one of the best shows the streaming service keeps renewing, might not be Gary Oldman’s most impressive performance, but it’s surely one of the most hilarious he’s ever done. As Lamb, he’s acidic, vile, gross, yet also sharp as a knife, even if he’s essentially a chain-smoking, overweight, and burnt-out alcoholic who once was an excellent intelligence officer working for the MI6. Well, the good news is, if you want to see Oldman playing another spy before he became a mocking fart-machine, you can do so in Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 Cold War thriller, “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
Based on spy novelist John le Carré’s 1974 book of the same name, the intricate and multi-layered story follows an emsemble cast in London in the early ’70s, with Oldman’s protagonist George Smiley at its center, as the British Secret Service (the “Circus”) learns that there’s a Soviet mole at the top among them. So they carefully employ every source they can to identify who that might be to hunt him down as quickly as possible.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is an immersive and elaborate gem among spy films
Tomas Alfredson’s Oscar-nominated feature was a lauded critical darling upon its release, and it boasts an 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It features the absolute crème de la crème of British actors, including legendary names like Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Kathy Burke, and the “Adolescence” star Stephen Graham, who also led a British prison series.
With a prestigious round-up like that and a strong source material from Le Carré, it’s really hard to miss, but screenwriters Bridget O’Connor and Peter Straughan certainly didn’t leave it to chance to provide a worthy adaptation of the novel for these acting giants. And they’ve got the quality and recognition they aimed for: “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the Oscars, receiving two other nominations for Best Original Score and Best Lead Performance.
Naturally, that wouldn’t have been possible without Alfredson’s singular vision as a director. Creating a quintessential atmosphere to revive the milieu of ’70s England, his film is filled with desolate locations, suffocating paranoia, and a mounting suspense that serves as fertile soil in which the narrative can blossom into an exceptional thriller. If you’re a fan — either of spy movies or Oldman — and for some reason missed this when it came out, you should undoubtedly seek it out as soon as you can — or at least until “Slow Horses” returns with its sixth season sometime this year.
