Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011) on Netflix
R20112h 7mDramaMysteryThriller
A Budapest operation leaves a colleague shot and George Smiley pushed out of British intelligence. A year later he returns to hunt a Soviet mole at the top of the service.
- Netflix3.4/5
- IMDb7.0/10228,201 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes84%
Trailer
Plot summary
In 1973 Control, who runs British intelligence, sends the field agent Jim Prideaux to Budapest. A Hungarian general there claims he can name a mole whom the Soviet spymaster Karla has placed among the Circus's senior staff. The meeting is a trap and Prideaux is shot. Control and his deputy George Smiley are retired, and Control dies soon after. Percy Alleline becomes Chief, with Bill Haydon, Roy Bland and Toby Esterhase around him; the four handle a secret Soviet source they call Witchcraft. After the field agent Ricki Tarr reports that a mole sits inside the service, the civil servant Oliver Lacon asks Smiley to investigate, and Smiley recruits Peter Guillam and the retired inspector Mendel to help.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Michael Fassbender was in talks to play the agent Ricki Tarr, but his shooting schedule for X-Men: First Class clashed; Tom Hardy took the role instead.
- Jared Harris was cast in the film but had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; Toby Jones replaced him.
- At a Circus office party in the film, guests sing along to "The Second Best Secret Agent in the Whole Wide World" from the 1965 spy spoof Licensed to Kill, and at the same Christmas function the staff sing the Soviet national anthem, led by a figure in a Lenin mask dressed as Father Christmas.
- The film closes with Julio Iglesias's version of the French song "La Mer"; the team chose it as something George Smiley would listen to alone, and Tomas Alfredson called it "everything that the world of MI6 isn't".
- The novel's Czechoslovak scenes were relocated to Hungary for the film because Hungary offered productions a 20% rebate.
