Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)

Shots framed through window panes and sets lit through a constant hazy mist emphasize the spy theme; some shots, like Ricki Tarr’s spying on a bedroom scene in the building across the street, have a Rear Window feel.

It was a stroke of genius to hire the Swedish Alfredson to direct this oh-so-English material, not only for the sideways-angle European sensibility he brings to the table, but also for the flair for suspense, off-center framing and gloomy sympathy for outsiders he demonstrated in the pre-teen-vampire story “ Let the Right One In .”

Tomas Alfredson, who directed the haunting and austere Swedish vampire film "Let the Right One In," uses voice-overs to clarify the link between complex and often hard-to-comprehend actions and events, to mixed success.

For his part, director Tomas Alfredson, whose previous film was the extraordinary Swedish vampiric coming-of-age tale "Let the Right One In," finds an intriguing approach to the material that presents everything in a slightly askew manner that adds a certain degree of tension to the proceedings--instead of the lush visuals that one normally associates with the spy genre, he and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema give the film a grey, gloomy look that will remind viewers more of the opening factory scenes in "Joe vs. the Volcano" than anything else.

There have been some, such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Tailor of Panama" and "The Constant Gardener," that have done a reasonably good job of transposing the material into cinematic terms without losing too much of the material in the process while others, including the largely forgotten likes of "The Deadly Affair," "The Looking Glass War" and the dreadful "The Little Drummer Girl," that made such utter hash of his words that even those who had actually read the stories had virtually no idea what was going on at any given time.

There have been some, such as "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold," "The Tailor of Panama" and "The Constant Gardener," that have done a reasonably good job of transposing the material into cinematic terms without losing too much of the material in the process while others, including the largely forgotten likes of "The Deadly Affair," "The Looking Glass War" and the dreadful "The Little Drummer Girl," that made such utter hash of his words that even those who had actually read the stories had virtually no idea what was going on at any given time.

Fans of The Ipcress File and le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, rejoice.

Standouts include Cyril Cusack as the borderline villainous MI6 chief, Michael Hordern as a pervy and pathetic low-level communist operative, and Rupert Davies as the polite, mostly well-intentioned agent, George Smiley – le Carré’s inherently decent, utterly repressed signature character who was later played by Alec Guinness in two acclaimed TV adaptations: 1979’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” and 1982’s “Smiley’s People.”

Seeing spies letting down their hair has a streak of absurdity about it that recalls helmer Alfredson’s roots in comedy, evident in the breakthrough feature he made with troupe Killingganget, “Four Shades of Brown,” whose title might be a suitable description of the palette of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”