BROWNED OFF WITH ACTION HEROES (TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY)
Madeline's attempts to persuade him to have a splash of colour in his wardrobe flounder as Gregory stubbornly asks her: "Is there anything with brown in it?"
If the grown up Gregory were to have a favourite film, I suspect it might be Tomas Alfredson's recent adaptation of John Le Carre's 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy'.
Various shades of brown dominate the drab decor and costumes of this meticulously plotted and carefully paced 1970s set Cold War thriller.
The slow camera pans, heavy focus on dialogue and the distinct lack of glamour of 'Tinker, Tailor...' are at odds with the cinematic mainstream. But far from repelling audiences, Alfredsen's film is a welcome antidote to the flashy visuals, frantic editing and in your face stuntwork of most modern espionage movies.
In many ways Swedish director Alfredson, who first came to the attention of international audiences with his smart vampire thriller 'Let the Right One In', has crafted an anti-Jason Bourne, anti-James Bond and anti-Ethan Hunt film.
There are no dramatic car chases, no rip roaring gun battles, no brutal karate fights and no daring bungee jumps. Most of the characters sport dodgy haircuts and biege clothes.
Alfredson and the husband and wife screenwriting team of Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor do not signpost their villains either. Rather they want their audience to focus on their characters and decipher who the main villain may be.
'Tinker, Tailor' begins with a botched abduction attempt on a British intelligence agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) in Budapest who is trying to find out the name of a Soviet spy operating within the Circus, an elite team within MI6.
The shooting leads to the early retirement of Control (John Hurt), the leader of the Circus and his colleague George Smiley (Gary Oldman).
Smiley, however, is coaxed out of retirement when a rogue agent Ricky Tarr (Tom Hardy) alleges a Soviet mole is operating within Circus - a suspicion Control, now dead, also had.
Aided by Peter Guillam (Benedict Cumberbatch), Smiley focuses on his former colleagues - the prickly Percy Alleline (Toby Jones), the suave Bill Haydon (Colin Firth), the shifty Roy Bland (Ciaran Hinds) and the sly Toby Esterhase (Davis Dencik).
Oscar nominated Oldman impresses in the principal role of Smiley - a tired, middle aged MI6 agent who has been betrayed professionally and in his marriage.
With his owlish glasses, he looks every inch the Whitehall civil servant and you suspect he is more at home behind a mountain of paperwork than holding a gun.
As Smiley, Oldman steps into the shoes of Sir Alec Guinness who memorably portrayed the spy hunter in the 1979 BBC mini-series adaptation of 'Tinker, Tailor...' and he turns a remarkably subtle, unshowy performance.
For most of his career, Oldman, like his contemporary Tim Roth, has never felt like an English actor even when he is appearing in British films.
From his breakthrough performances as Sid Vicious in Alex Cox's 'Sid and Nancy' and as Joe Orton in Stephen Frears' 'A Prick Up Your Ears' to his more flashy Hollywood turns as Lee Harvey Oswald in Oliver Stone's 'JFK' and the edgy New York cop Stansfield in Luc Besson's 'Leon', he has always had the intensity of a Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken or Mickey Rourke.
However here, he is very much an actor in the classic British cinema tradition and he holds his own against Guinness's portrayal of Smiley.
While Oldman deserves his Oscar nomination, many of his fellow cast members should feel a little cheated not to have made the Academy Awards shortlist.
Hurt, Firth, Hinds, Jones, Dencik, Strong and Cumberbatch all have strong turns but the knockout supporting performance comes from Tom Hardy - in many ways the actor whose high octane style most resembles Oldman's usual schtick.
As Tarr, he injects a mixture of unpredictability and vulnerability into a movie where all the other characters prefer to keep their cards close to their chest.
It is also nice to see Kathy Burke return to the big screen as the researcher Connie, the ever reliable Stephen Graham as her colleague Jerry Westerby and Belfast's Stuart Graham as a Government Minister.
Alfredsen should also feel hard done by not to land a Best Director nomination. The early set piece in Budapest is so deftly handled that is worthy of comparisons with Alfred Hitchcock from the detail of a woman breast feeding her baby to the sweat dripping onto the cafe table.
Straughan and O'Connor deserve a lot of credit for their intelligent screenplay which deservedly landed them a BAFTA.
Alfredsen's movie is rich in content if not in glamour - a Cold War period piece which will hopefully yield a sequel.
'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' is available to rent or buy on StudioCanal DVD.
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