Directed by: Tomas Alfredson
Starring: Gary Oldman, Tom Hardy, Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mark Strong
Rated: R
127 minutes

Gary Oldman stars as intelligence officer George Smiley in "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy." (Courtesy photo)

There's a moment about two minutes into "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" when two men are drinking coffee in a Hungarian café, conversing about goulash. Suddenly, everything goes quiet, and we instantly know something sinister is afoot. It's a great moment of suspense, one of the best I've seen in recent memory. It works because we know so little, yet we know so much.

That's how the rest of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" goes, too. We might not understand the situation, but we know exactly what's happening. This is an extremely confusing movie if you aren't familiar with John le Carré's novel or the various adaptations that have come before, but regardless of your knowledge of the plot, this is a smart, wonderfully acted movie, a thriller that pulls and throws its punches at just the right times.

The plot revolves around rumors of a Soviet mole in the highest ranks of British Intelligence during the peak of the Cold War. After a botched mission in Hungary gets agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong, "Sherlock Holmes") shot, George Smiley (Gary Oldman, "Léon"), one of the highest-ranked officers in Intelligence, is forced into retirement. He is soon asked to come back to help investigate the mole rumors, though. A young intelligence officer, Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch, "Atonement") secretly assists Smiley in the investigation; their search focuses on the four remaining heads of intelligence, each one suspicious in his own right.

Smiley has a major piece of the puzzle in Ricki Tarr (Tom Hardy, "Inception"), a rogue agent who was the first one to suspect a mole. Tarr, whom many believe to be a defector himself, comes to Smiley in the hopes of helping to discover the true mole. The secret investigation requires a careful reexamination of the past, of things that were said and done and, more importantly, things that weren't said and weren't done. Smiley soon realizes there was more to Prideaux's trip to Hungary than he thought. He just has to find out what secrets lay behind that mission and who had those secrets in the first place.

The genius of this movie is in its use of empty space. Tomas Alfredson ("Let the Right One In") embraces the concept of silence over sound, letting images and the actors' body language do most of the talking. Of course, for those of us who don't know the story already, Alfredson's approach makes the movie that much more confusing, but not impossibly so.

Bridget O'Connor and Peter Straughan's ("The Debt") adapted screenplay covers a huge amount of information, but Alfredson takes his time to deliver it. The slow pace of the movie is crucial to the suspense. This isn't an edge-of-your-seat thriller, there is little action, and characters rarely even raise their voices, but when revelations come about or when there is violence, it stings all the more.

Alfredson's most important tools for creating suspense so successfully are, of course, his actors. Gary Oldman is perfectly cast as the ironically-named Smiley, a man reserved and reticent to the point of frustration. He says so little and has such small reactions, but we can see his intelligence and his thoughts play out on his face. The slightest curl of the upper lip or wrinkle of the forehead says more than enough.

The supporting cast, meanwhile, is extremely good, standing out as one of the movie's many highlights. Tom Hardy caps a big year in his career with a great performance as the young Tarr, a starry-eyed agent just starting to understand the subversive ways in which his superiors work. Benedict Cumberbatch, in addition to having a fantastic name, is all business here, delivering a strong performance as Guillam. The strongest of the lot, though, is Mark Strong, who portrays Prideaux with a perfect amount of bitterness, honesty, and trauma.

"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" isn't an immediately striking film. I left the theater wondering if I'd just seen a movie that bit off more than it could chew; I didn't even think Oldman was that great. But this is a movie that gets better the more you think about it, a movie that stays with you after you watch it. It will require a second viewing in order to catch all the details, but that's a requirement I'll be happy to fulfill.

Danny Eisenberg is a 2010 graduate of the Bromfield School and is currently a student at the University of Pennsylvania.