The Pigeon Tunnel, on Apple TV+

It is not so hard to figure out where David Cornwell, the spy novelist known as “John le Carre,” got his ideas. British intelligence posted him to West Berlin during the time the Berlin Wall was built and Kim Philby fled to the Soviet Union. He was also the son of a conman. Before his death in 2020, le Carre sat down for several long, relentlessly candid interviews that Errol Morris shaped into The Pigeon Tunnel, which premieres Friday on Apple TV+.

Many times, le Carre used “The Pigeon Tunnel” as a working title for his novels, but it finally stuck for his memoirs (which Morris sort of adapted). It refers to the pigeons used as live skeet targets at a Monte Carlo casino the young Cornwell visited with his degenerate father. Morris is just as obsessed with the pigeon imagery as le Carre was, if not more so judging from how often it appears in the doc.

Pigeon Tunnel is definitely a very Morris-ish doc, but it stylistically and thematically suits his subject, who wrote about deceit after experiencing it first-hand. Le Carre/Cornwell clearly expresses his expectation that the film would serve as a final testament or summation, so his answers are always brutally honest, even when things are still a bit ambiguous in his own mind.

For le Carre fans and critics, Pigeon Tunnel will be a terrific resource. He confirms Bill Haydon in Tinker Tailor is largely inspired by Philby, which everybody always largely assumed. However, it deepens our understanding of the morality of his novels and worldview. Terms like le Carre-esque have been used to suggest a moral equivalence between the NATO-West and the Soviets, but that now seems like an inaccurate, or at least incomplete assessment of his ideology.

He remains blisteringly critical of his former employers at MI5 and MI6, but that is understandable, considering he lived through the Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, and Guy Burgess debacles. However, he openly expresses anger and contempt for Philby, for his betrayal, even at his advanced age. It is complicated for le Carre, who acknowledges he would have been a prime candidate for Soviet recruitment. Yet, the atrocities of Stalin, whom the Cambridge spies initially served, represents a point of moral clarity for the writer, or so we can interpret from his sit-downs with Morris. He was similarly appalled by the Berlin Wall.

Le Carre’s Our Kind of Traitor

It turns out Putin even ruined the Russian Mob. They used to be reasonable gangsters a money launderer like Dima Vladimirovich Krasnov could do business with. Unfortunately, the newly installed boss is far more vicious than any of the old school Thieves By Law. Knowing his days are numbered, Krasnov reaches out to the least imposing Brit he can find in Susanna White’s adaptation of the John le Carré novel Our Kind of Traitor (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Gail Perkins is rather bent out of sorts when her husband Perry Makepeace allows the free-spending Dima to whisk him away for a night of partying, but the Russian can be persuasive. He is desperate, in fact. The money launderer is scheduled to sign over his accounts to the entitled gangster heir, aptly dubbed Prince, at which time, what happened to his colleague in the prologue will mostly likely befall Dima and his family. Somehow Krasnov convinces the skittish Makepeace to carry a list of names to British intelligence, much to the appalled surprise of his wife.

Dima’s intel might just be too good. One of his names is Aubrey Longrigg, the up-and-coming cabinet minister, with whom counter-intelligence specialist Hector Meredith holds a deeply personal grudge. Krasnov promises the corresponding account numbers in exchange for his family’s safety. Not one to be deterred by skeptical bureaucrats, Meredith goes off the books, keeping his close associates and Makepeace, the designated go-between, in the dark. However, when the Longrigg’s political allies try to put the kibosh on the operation, Makepeace and Perkins double-down with Meredith out of loyalty to Dima’s family.

On the spectrum of le Carré adaptations, Traitor is one of the better efforts without George Smiley. As Meredith, Damian Lewis is no Sir Alec Guinness or Gary Oldman, but he is still more than the equal of the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was indeed the best thing about A Most Wanted Man.

Yet, it is Stellan Skarsgård who really propels the film as the flamboyant Krasnov. Frankly, his wardrobe might be the film’s greatest special effect. Mark Gatiss and Khalid Abdalla add further heft and flair portraying Meredith’s cloak-and-dagger colleagues. Technically, Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris are the leads, but their low energy bickering is the least interesting aspect of the film. Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle gives it all the austere sheen of a Norman Foster building, but Marcelo Zarvos score is disappointingly classy, in a non-descript sort of way.

Unlike many le Carré narratives, screenwriter Hossein Amini’s adaptation does not bogged down in a lot of details. This is the rare le Carré that you watch for the characters rather than the twists—and Skarsgård’s Dima is most definitely a character. It also allows Meredith to take a stand against moral equivalency while squarely planting the villain’s mustache on Putinist Russia. We’ll take that in a le Carré film any day. Recommended with enthusiasm, Our Kind of Traitor opens this Friday (7/1) in New York at several theaters, including the AMC Empire, and in Brooklyn at BAM.

A Most Wanted Man: When Hoffman Met le Carre

Yes, intelligence gathering sometimes involves cloak-and-dagger work, but there is also a lot of bureaucracy. That has always been a side of the secretive business novelist John le Carré has been closely in touch with. For better or worse, all the hallmarks of a le Carré bestseller are to be found in Anton Corbijn’s adaptation of his A Most Wanted Man (trailer here), which opens this Thursday in New York.

Hamburg was the city where the September 11^th terrorist attacks were planned—a fact German intelligence is keenly aware of. It was not Gunther Bachmman’s territory at the time, but the spymaster is still in need of redemption. He was transferred to port city after his Beirut network was exposed. The who’s, how’s, and why’s remain murky, but there is no question regarding damage done to his career. However, the world weary scotch drinker has big game in his sights: Dr. Faisal Abdullah, an ostensive philanthropist and advocate of Muslim tolerance, whom Bachmann has reason to suspect is furtively funneling funds to terrorist organizations.

Being old school to his bones, Bachmann eschews interrogations or anything physical. He prefers to trap his prey and then turn them into assets. That is the plan with Abdullah, using the poor hapless Issa Karpov as bait. The son of a Chechen woman and a high ranking (and therefore corrupt) Soviet military officer, Karpov understandably identifies with his mother’s side of the family. Escaping his Russian torturers, Karpov has been branded an Islamist terrorist, but Bachmann is skeptical. Dieter Mohr, a more politically sensitive rival from an overlapping agency, would prefer to arrest the Chechen with great fanfare, but Bachmann sees the newly arrived asylum-seeker as an opportunity.

As it turns out, Karpov’s despised old man had an account in Hamburg—an account large enough to be a chip in Bachmann’s game. However, to play it, he will have to handle Karpov’s immigration attorney, Annabel Richter, and Tommy Brue, the banker holding his funds. Unfortunately, Bachmann is a le Carré protagonist, which means he must spend a great deal of time in boardrooms convincing dim-witted ministers to go along with his plan. For now, Martha Sullivan, the regional CIA string-puller, will give him time, but her patience and Bachmann’s trust are limited.

If you like your thrillers talky, you are already a le Carré reader and therefore thoroughly primed for Wanted. On the plus side, Corbijn’s is fully stocked with intelligent characters and meaty dialogue heavy with meaning. Conversely, le Carré’s moral equivalency between all parties is present in full force, as well as an aversion to cinematic action. Although its running time clocks in just over two hours, the ending still feels unsatisfyingly unfinished, leaving viewers to wonder if everyone would really leave things as they are.

Of course, the primary, if not only reason to see Wanted is the late Philip Seymour Hoffman, who fits into the role of Bachmann like a comfortably rumpled suit. Le Carré has said Hoffman is the only American who could play his iconic George Smiley—and it is easy to see what he means. Bachmann and Smiley are clearly cut from same cloth, while Hoffman, Gary Oldman, and Alec Guinness were/are some of the smartest, most engaging actors in the business.

Hoffman’s mushy German accent also works rather well in context, but Rachel McAdams is not nearly as convincing as Richter, the slumming daughter of privilege human rights attorney. At least Willem Dafoe certainly looks at home as Brue, the self-loathing banker. Sadly, Nina Hoss does not have much to do as Bachmann’s lieutenant, Irna Frey, but she classes up the joint, nonetheless. Most of the German cast-members largely serve as window dressing, especially Rush’s Daniel Brühl, who is about as easy to spot as Tony Curtis in The List of Adrian Messenger playing one of Bachmann’s surveillance specialists. Arguably, it is Robin Wright who best hangs with Hoffman, warily sparring with his Bachmann as the suspiciously smooth Sullivan.

Wisely, Andrew Bouvell’s adapted screenplay somewhat waters down the criticism of post-9-11 American foreign policy, but anti-Americanism is baked into the fiber of le Carré’s source novel. Yet, it is the film’s brief but explicit criticisms of Putin’s Russia that feel timelier now. Corbijn has a good eye for the project, capturing the cold, cerebral world of intrigue and modernist architecture. There is much to admire about it, but aside from Hoffman’s haggard everyman performance, the film does it best to keep viewers at arm’s length, like a film that does not want to be wanted. Recommended for knowing fans of le Carré and Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man opens this Thursday night (7/24) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

Smiley Returns: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Five ghosts haunt John le Carré’s most celebrated spy novel. The shadow of the so-called “Cambridge Four” spy ring, including the treasonous Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, looms large over the story, especially given the circumstances of their private lives. The fifth of course, is Sir Alec Guinness, who is so closely associated with the role of mole-hunter George Smiley. However, Obiwan Kenobi should be smiling down on Gary Oldman, who confidently assumes the Smiley mantle in Tomas Alfredson’s appropriately cerebral adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Smiley once was the deputy chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (a.k.a. MI6, but known colloquially as “The Circus”), but he was forced out with his boss, known as “Control,” when an operation went spectacularly wrong. As a result, a field operative (or “scalp-hunter” in Circus parlance) was captured, effectively ending Control’s related mole-hunt. Unfortunately, it turns out the late spymaster was not so paranoid after all, as the minister begrudgingly admits when he brings Smiley back into service to furtively investigate the four top officers of the Circus, code-named by Control: Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, and Spy (skipping “sailor” from the old nursery rhyme, because it is too close to “tailor”).

There are no explosions in TTSS, nor is there a whole lot of shooting, but when it happens, it is significant. Instead, we watch as Smiley pieces the puzzle together, interviewing a diverse cast of professional thugs and bureaucrats, gleaning tantalizing clues from each resulting flashback. Yet, perhaps most intriguing are the glimpses we get of “Karla,” the notorious Soviet intelligence mastermind (played by a rarely seen Patrick Stewart in the classic BBC series, no less). Smiley might be chasing a mole, but his real adversary is definitely Karla, who fully understands his retired rival’s weaknesses.

Gary Oldman is the key reason why the revamped TTSS works so well. In a way, Smiley could be considered the dark side of his Commissioner Gordon persona in the Dark Knight franchise. Like Guinness, he plays Smiley’s cool detachment in a way that makes it clear the gears are turning furiously within his head. Occasionally, he even seems to adopt some of Sir Alec’s cadences and mannerisms, but that is fine. Frankly, those familiar with the prior incarnation will rather want to hear that echo.

TTSS also features at least a dozen genuinely first class British actors, some famous and some who should be. John Hurt’s casting as Control is so perfect it requires no explanation. Likewise, Toby Jones, Colin Firth, and Ciarán Hinds add plenty of color as the Circus’s inner circle and Smiley’s prime suspects, by extension. Yet, it is the intense and dynamic supporting work of Mark Strong and the soon to be famous Tom Hardy as scalp-hunters Jim Prideaux and Ricki Tarr that really crackle and hum.

Alfredson has helmed a sleek and brainy espionage thriller (one can see a certain kinship with his frosty, Nordic vampire tale, Let the Right One In), but it is definitely a product of the le Carré school of Cold War moral equivalency. Smiley himself explicitly states there is no ethical distinction between us and them. Even the mole himself eventually explains his decision to betray his country was largely based on aesthetics (which seems bizarre, considering he should be fully versed in the glories of Socialist Realism). Frankly, given the wealth of revelations that have flooded out of the former Soviet bloc, such revisionism seems like a dated relic of the 1970’s, but at least it matches the pseudo-retro vibe of the film.

TTSS is an absorbing big screen intrigue, even though it is relatively easy to guess the mole’s identity, solely on the basis of screen-time allotment. (Frustratingly, this means one of the best actors of our day is rather short-changed in the process.) Still, watching Oldman’s Smiley is the real show, following not just in the footsteps of Guinness but also the great James Mason (who played the character, inexplicably renamed Charles Dobbs, in Sidney Lumet’s moody but effective The Deadly Affair). He is worthy successor, deserving serious Oscar consideration. Recommended for intelligent viewers who enjoy films about Intelligence, TTSS opens this Friday (12/9) in New York at the AMC Lincoln Square and Village 7.