Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

• Director: Tomas Alfredson
• Stars: Gary Oldman, Colin Firth
• Rating: ****

“Nothing is genuine anymore,” a character sighs in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, but he couldn’t be more wrong.

This film is the real deal, set in pre-digital 1970s. Based on the bestselling 1974 John le Carré novel, which also spawned a memorable 1979 TV miniseries, it’s a movie of chain smokers and whisperers, of rattling tea cups and rotary-dialed telephones.

Oscar-nommed Gary Oldman brilliantly assumes the role of stone-faced George Smiley, an ex-British Secret Service man brought out of retirement to search for a Soviet mole who has infiltrated the MI6.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is not just a movie about intelligence, it’s an intelligent movie.