Was this the film that gave Gary Oldman the taste for espionage that he put to better use being Jackson Lamb? He is so low key as to be almost inert in this one (and does rather too plummy an accent for his range and plausibility, in my opinion), and that, along with the film palette that has been drained of all but smidges of color makes this a generally dreary affair. In general, that palette tends to be used nowadays by filmmakers wishing to recreate the 70s (or late 60s? hard to tell) as here, but having lived through it, I don't remember it being quite so drab. You certainly can't fault this film's cast, though, what with Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth, Ciaran Hinds, Toby Jones, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong, and Stephen Graham (and yes, the presence of Kathy Burke does not stop it being overwhelmingly a sausage fest) you have three generations of top British (and Irish) actors. Part of the reason for that cast is that there's a secret mole and you'd guess immediately who it was if only one other actor besides Oldman was a star. As a result, some of that cast ends up being rather underused. As it was, I found the plot a bit convoluted and not helped by the rather confusingly structured film, with a lot of flashbacks, mostly to various Christmas office parties. But Jami liked it. In general, spy stories aren't really my cup of tea.
No comments:
Post a Comment