The film stars an ensemble cast including Gary Oldman as George Smiley, with Colin Firth, Tom Hardy, John Hurt, Toby Jones, Mark Strong, Benedict Cumberbatch, Ciarán Hinds, David Dencik and Kathy Burke.

The novel had previously been adapted into the award-winning 1979 BBC television series of the same name with Alec Guinness playing the lead role of Smiley.

After the meeting, field agent Ricki Tarr, currently in hiding due to being connected to several deaths in Istanbul, telephones Lacon to inform him of a mole within the Circus.

After setting up a base in the Hotel Islay, Smiley has Guillam steal personnel records and copies of the Circus' slush fund accounts.

Sachs had discovered evidence that Soviet cultural attaché Alexei Polyakov was actually a military officer, and suspected his true role was to run a mole in London; Alleline had scoffed at her findings and sacked her.

Tarr tells how he was assigned to trail Boris, a Russian trade delegate in Istanbul who was offering to defect, but whom he quickly guessed was actually KGB.

Hours after Tarr cabled London about the existence of a double agent the local station chief was murdered and Irina abducted.

Smiley contacts another sacked loyalist, former duty officer Jerry Westerby, who tells him of how Prideaux's shooting sent Control into shock.

The four Witchcraft lead officers believe Polyakov is trading sensitive Russian military and political intelligence for trivial British material.

Smiley informs Lacon and the Minister that the true object of Witchcraft is to lure the CIA into sharing US intelligence, which the mole can then leak to Karla.

Smiley informs him he will be traded for British operatives held in the Soviet Union, and agrees to settle several of Haydon's sexual relationships with both women and men.

The director cast Gary Oldman in the role of George Smiley, and described the actor as having "a great face" and "the quiet intensity and intelligence that's needed".

[9] Michael Fassbender was in talks at one point to star as Ricki Tarr, but the shooting schedule conflicted with his work on X-Men: First Class; Tom Hardy was cast instead.

[11] Jared Harris was cast but had to drop out because of scheduling conflicts with Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows; he was replaced by Toby Jones.

[7] The production reunited Alfredson with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema and editor Dino Jonsäter, with whom he had made his previous film Let the Right One In.

[21] Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack), an album featuring Alberto Iglesias's score, was released by Silva Screen Records on 14 October 2011.

The site's critics' consensus states: "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a dense puzzle of anxiety, paranoia, and espionage that director Tomas Alfredson pieces together with utmost skill.

[28] Jonathan Romney of The Independent wrote, "The script is a brilliant feat of condensation and restructuring: writers Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor realise the novel is overtly about information and its flow, and reshape its daunting complexity to highlight that".

[29] David Gritten of The Daily Telegraph declared the film "a triumph" and gave it a five star rating,[30] as did his colleague, Sukhdev Sandhu.

"[32] M. Enois Duarte of High-Def Digest also praised the film as a "brilliant display of drama, mystery and suspense, one which regards its audience with intelligence".

He wrote: "To strip down or minimalize le Carré, however, is to sacrifice the almost Tolkienesque grain and depth of his created world: the decades-long backstory, the lingo, the arcana, the liturgical repetitions of names and functions".

[34] Keith Uhlich of Time Out New York named Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy the fourth-best film of 2011, calling it "a visually stunning adaptation with a stellar cast.

[47] While doing press for Dawn of the Planet of the Apes in 2014, Oldman stated that talk of a sequel, an adaptation of Smiley's People, had since disappeared; while also stressing that he would still like to see the film produced.

Alfredson expressed an interest in directing Oldman in a future TV miniseries adaptation of Smiley's People but he thought that the moment had likely passed.

[50] In an interview with the Radio Times in September 2024, producer Douglas Urbanski said that, "We loved Tinker and we started to do prep for Gary to do Smiley’s People, and suddenly there was an unexpected rights issue.