The Ultimate Movie Guide

In theaters Dec. 9

You can almost smell the cigarette smoke and cold sweat that pervade Tomas Alfredson's atmospheric adap-tation of John le Carré's novel. No two-hour-plus movie could preserve all the riches of le Carré's espionage masterpiece--the brilliant BBC miniseries needed more than five hours. The biggest loss in Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan's smart, twisty screenplay is the short shrift given three of the suspected traitors. But the gifted Swede Alfredson (Let the Right One In) makes this story of personal and political betrayal his own. His great cast, which includes Colin Firth, Mark Strong, and Tom Hardy, is a who's who of hot British actors, but what's striking is how un-English this tense, brooding Tinker, Tailor feels. The dank chill that courses through the movie is hauntingly Nordic.