Movie Experience and Review: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

As mentioned earlier in the week, I went to see a movie on Saturday afternoon. I took in the 4:30 showing of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy", a British flick starring Gary Oldman (a genius!) and a Colin Firth (LOVE him) and a bunch of other cute and also not so cute British men. The film was released overseas in September of last year but for whatever reason was released in the States just this month. All the reviews said it was a flawless and (insert other flattering adjectives here) performance by Oldman so I thought, well, I'll go check this out.

Once again I went by myself. Jackie has her kids this past weekend and I really didn't think anyone else I know would want to see this particular film so I opted to just go by myself, mostly to get out of the house before I forever became a permanent fixture on the couch.

I got to the theater about 15 minutes before the movie started, bought my ticket and a medium popcorn. I had my contraband Diet Coke in my purse. I found a seat at the end of an aisle where there were five empty seats together. I put my coat and purse in the seat at the aisle and sat next to them. People started flowing into the theater and there were a few times when I thought that someone was going to plop down beside me, but thankfully that didn't happen and I was able to enjoy the luxury of elbow room and moving around freely without disturbing anyone next to me.

One couple that came in looked perilously close to sitting next to me but instead chose the two seats directly across the aisle from me. Let me tell you, if they had sat next to me, I probably would have gotten up and asked for a refund because it was bad enough having them across the aisle. The man constantly snorted and sniffed and it wasn't discreet in the least. Each time he snorted, he then sounded as though he was about to choke on whatever he snorted up and would cough and clear his throat. Clearly he has issues. I don't know if he was sick or if this is his normal behavior but if I was his wife or whoever that woman was with him, I would not have put up with that. It was disturbing. Once the movie got started, he didn't do it quite as often. My guess is because the movie was very quiet. At one point he got up and to be honest, I was so engrossed in the movie that I didn't even notice. I did, however, notice when he came back and it started all over again. I tried to give him the stink eye when I left, but the theater was dark so I doubt it did any good. But, seriously, it was probably the worst movie experience I've had as far as weirdos in the crowd.

On to the movie portion of this story - I had no idea what this movie was going to be about, just that the previews were intriguing enough to get me down to the theater. Turns out it was about a British government agency (they never said, but my guess was MI-6) who was tracking a mole within the group, well, Gary Oldman was tracking the mole. The film is based on the book of the same name, which was written in the 1970s and no, I haven't read it so I can't give you a comparison. In fact, this movie is not one that's easy to write about because the plot was quite complicated. You had to follow along real closely, blocking out as best you could, any snorting that was taking place to your left. The scenes flash back to the past and then to the present and everyone is trying to find the elusive Karla and who is leaking information to Karla. In other words, if you are looking for an easy breezy movie, this one isn't it. The film is very quiet and there are sometimes scenes where no one at all is talking, just thinking or reminiscing. It's a different sort of film, but it was quite good. In fact, it's a little over two hours long and when it was over, I could hardly believe that much time had passed. For me, I got really engrossed in what was going on and who was Karla's spy and would they ever catch him. Which one was it? Tinker? Tailor? Soldier? Or Spy? Code names, you see.

I'll let you go see if for yourself if you want to find out all the gory details. It was quite a good film, but not one that everyone in your group will enjoy.