Come the night and it may well lose out to The Artist, but nominated for 11 BAFTAs, including best film, director and actor, there’s no denying that this new  version of John Le Carre’s Cold War spy thriller, first adapted as a 1979 BBC mini-series starring Alec Guinness, is film making of the highest order.

Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director of  Let the Right One In, brings a very British sensibility to proceedings, not just in terms of its overcast, rainy fug  with a palette of drab, washed out greys, browns and nicotine stains but in the understated, reserved and emotionally impersonal nature of its characters. It’s not just as spies that they give away nothing of themselves, but as the people they are.

Although the threads are tightly knotted, the basic plot’s fairly straightforward. Set in 1973, following an international incident in which agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) is gunned down during a blown Budapest mission, Control (John Hurt), head of the Circus (British Secret Service) is pressured into retirement along with his right hand man, George Smiley (Gary Oldman).

However, not long after Smiley is approached by a government official  to investigate an allegation that, as the now  late Control suspected, there is a Russian mole at the very top of the Circus.  As codenamed by Control, there are four suspects.  Tinker - Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), the new Circus head; Tailor – rakishly smooth bisexual Bill Haydon (Colin Firth); Soldier – stolid Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds), Alleline’s close ally; and Poorman – the ambitious backstabbing Toby Esterhase (David Dencik).  It could be as much about office politics as it is espionage.

All four are part of the ‘magic circle’, those with access to Operation Witchcraft, the high grade intelligence delivered by the Soviet agent run by Alleline and Bland, but about which both Control and Smiley were always sceptical.

Enlisting the aid of Peter Guillam (Benedeict Cumberbatch, gifted with the film’s most exciting scene), who runs the Service’s scalphunters unit, the agents responsible for turning possible defectors, and with vital information provided by Connie Sachs (Kathy Burke), the former head of personnel dismissed by Alleline, Ricky Tarr (Tom Hardy), one of Guillam’s field agents, and Jerry Westerby (Stephen Graham), the duty officer on the night Prideaux was shot, Smiley slowly begins to meticulously put the pieces together. Gradually a jigsaw forms that involves longtime nemesis Karla, the head of Russian intelligence, and a close to home betrayal by Smiley’s wife.

Inevitably, the adaptation is considerably more condensed than the TV series, but the essentials are all intact and true to the source while Alfredson’s low key minimalist direction carefully mirrors Le Carre’s own ellipitical style, relying on very little action – a couple of gunshots and the occasional raised voice – but making effective use of silence and close ups to create atmosphere and tension.

Although, perhaps deliberately, the four suspects remain character blanks in many ways, given surface traits but no deeper stories, the performances are, as everywhere, faultless. No more so than Oldman who, while a steelier and less world weary Smiley than Guinness, perfectly captures his analytical watchfulness and resigned cynicism while also suggesting a churning sense of rage.

A commercial as well as critical hit, it’s a welcome reminder that you can attract an audience without the need for excessive special effects, hyperactive editing and explosions every five minutes and that consummate acting, intelligent writing and considered direction are still highly bankable cinematic currency.

 The BBC followed up with a sequel, Smiley’s People, but never got round to making the middle title of the Karla trilogy, The Honourable Schoolboy, which has only ever been adapted for radio. Hopefully, the success of Tinker means we’ll be seeing a lot more of George Smiley in the years to come.