Slow Motion Smiley

You are here: Magazine / Slow Motion Smiley

A remake of a television version of the espionage novel.

Dec 26, 2011, Vol. 17, No. 15 • By JOHN PODHORETZ

Single Page Print Larger Text Smaller Text Alerts

That urgency is gone now that we live in a time when no sane person would even think to argue the democratic West and the Stalinist East were morally equivalent. Le Carré’s Cold War nihilism belongs in a mausoleum of discarded ideas. Perhaps that explains why this new Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy has the feel of a mausoleum—beautiful and impressive and inert and cold as hell.

John Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, is The Weekly Standard’s movie critic.