Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, from Let the Right One In director Tomas Alfredson, based on the spy novel by John le Carré, premieres at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend, and now the first clip from the film is online. It stars Mark Strong, Gary Oldman, John Hurt, Colin Firth, and Tom Hardy, and the first clip is everything you could ever want in a clip, provided what you want is super-serious British dudes having a gravelly-voice contest. GRR, GUV, DA QUEEN SAYS DA BARRISTAH’S LORRIE HAIN’T BEEN DIS NACKERED IN DOG’S EARS.

In the clip, “Control” (John Hurt), the head of the “Circus” (aka Britian’s intelligence agency, MI6) instructs agent Jim Prideaux (Mark Strong) in the hunt for the mole, assigning code-names to each of the suspects in the hunt.  The code names are “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Poor Man” and the fifth suspect is protagonist George Smiley (Gary Oldman), the retired MI6 agent who joins the investigation. [Collider]

And he puts their pictures on chess pieces, just so everyone understands that THEY’RE PLAYING A DANGEROUS GAME! AND THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME IS MAN! I’m going out on a limb here, but I bet when someone gets killed, they knock over his chess piece.

Jim? You should really quit smoking, Jim. Those cigarettes are going to kill you.

I know, but THEY’RE SO CINEMATIC!

Jim, this is very serious, isn’t it, Jim. Jim? Jim.