I have liked many of John le Carré’s espionage novels, which chronicle in exhaustive detail the intricacies of how international spycraft is truly manifested. Le Carré’s books are long, and somewhat difficult to initially penetrate, because they are so filled with minutiae — and that has prevented some of them from being filmed, including this one, until now. When the book was adapted into a seven-part British TV miniseries in 1979, it filled 315 minutes. For this feature film, that is cut by more than half, into 127 minutes, and the results are disappointing.

Truth be told, however, I would not want the film to be any longer, because it’s rather a snooze-fest already. Tomas Alfredson’s film depicts high-level, international spying that threatens the balance of power in the 1970s, but one would never guess that from its complete lack of excitement. The actors (Gary Oldman, Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch, John Hurt, Mark Strong) are all fine, delivering performances that actually humanize the living ciphers they are portraying. But the film lets them down because it barely amounts to anything at all.

The details become numbing after a while, with so many of them offering no clues to the central mystery of a mole in British intelligence. Emotions are kept in check all the time, by pretty much everyone, which allows no catharsis for the characters, or the audience. It’s a dreary man’s world, with the only women of note to be victimized or to decorate the backgrounds of scenes. The film is basically centered around Gary Oldman’s character, but it is at its best when other characters take the lead, such as Mark Strong and Tom Hardy. Their stories are more interesting.

As for Gary Oldman, who has been Oscar-nominated for the role of George Smiley, the disgraced agent assigned to ferret out the mole, I am surprised at his nomination. Oldman has less dialogue than Clint Eastwood in his spaghetti westerns, and he rarely changes his facial expression. Oldman is a good actor but he has very little to do in this movie. I would not have nominated him for it. Ultimately, I think the film wastes his talents and is far too methodically dull to be successful. I expected a great deal more from it, for the book is a compelling read.  ✰ ✰ ½.  26 Jan. 2012.