Gary Oldman may play the leading role of George Smiley in the screen revival of John le Carre's 1974 novel, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy but this depiction of a Cold War MI6 has some serious talent in its ranks. Smiley's people include reigning best Oscar winner Colin Firth, as well as veterans John Hurt, Ciaran Hinds, Mark Strong and Toby Jones. And it even has room for two bright young things - the brawny Tom Hardy and the captivating Benedict Cumberbatch.
The task of condensing a 400-page novel into a sleek feature film running just over two hours, while retaining the nuance of the story and characters, proved a daunting task for the British screenwriting couple Peter Straughan and Bridget O'Connor, who has since died of cancer. Straughan points out that choices had to be made in the 1979 mini-series too. "A couple of characters were cut, even though they had seven hours. We never intended to do the whole book. We had to find a fillet to cut out and go with that."
The job of helming the movie - which was financed in full by the French company StudioCanal, making it an all-European production - was given to Swedish director Tomas Alfredson, who had shown his cool restraint on a genre film in his 2008 vampire horror Let the Right One In.
But Alfredson doesn't see much of a cultural divide. "We are breastfed with the BBC and American television in Sweden," he says.
Casting for the lead spymaster, George Smiley, was a major challenge.
