In my review of the campaign for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy I wrote:
There’s obviously, as I pointed out a couple times, an effort to make this appear as action-packed as possible in order to try and attract people with the promise of an adventure-filled time out at the movies. But that’s contradicted by the fact that certain elements of the campaign – I’m thinking here of the posters and the publicity efforts specifically – make it clear that this is a movie best enjoyed while actually thinking about it.
I finally saw the movie (four years is nothing…) and can say that what I wrote back then is pretty spot on. There’s not much – if any – action in the movie and what there is is very understated. This is the Anti-Bond/Bourne. All the spycraft here is done on paper. It’s done via long, stilted conversations in Hungarian cafes. Problems aren’t argued in front of the boss in big dramatic fashion, they’re thought out in long scenes of people looking out the window while they listen to the recording of a phone tap.
So you had a campaign that was trying to show a big piece of mass entertainment. The movie itself, though, was more about being able to analyze data, discern motives based on deeply hidden clues and more. That doesn’t mean it’s boring – it’s just as thrilling as any other spy movie – but it does mean that it was always meant for a different kind of fan and not the general audience that makes Bond movies box-office smash hits.
