Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 2011 Cold War spy thriller film directed by Tomas Alfredson.

Bartholomew "Barley" Scott-Blair (Sean Connery), the head of a British publishing firm, arrives in Moscow on business.

Issa Karpov, a political refugee from Chechnya who has been tortured by Russian security forces, illegally enters Hamburg, Germany.

Set in Europe and the Middle East, the plot follows the Mossad's clandestine attempt to flush out a PLO bomber named Khalil.

With the Cold War rapidly coming to an end, retired CIA operative Sam Boyd has taken up freelancing as a corporate spy for cosmetics giant Maxine Gray, only to find that his hands-on style of espionage is being rendered obsolete by the capabilities of younger computer hackers.

Maurice Castle (Nicol Williamson) is a mid-level bureaucrat in MI6 whose life seems unremarkable, apart from the fact that he has an African wife, Sarah (Iman), and son, Sam (Gary Forbes).

East German dissident Alex Holbeck (Martin Sheen), living in Paris, hosts a radio program aimed at Iron Curtain countries.

Andy Osnard is an MI6 spy reassigned to Panama after having an affair in Madrid with the foreign minister's mistress.

In a money laundering scheme, "the Prince" – head of the Russian Mafia – creates a new bank in London and has its financial oligarchs sign over their accounts to him.

The film opens with pub landlord and frequent holidaymaker Vic Flange (Sid James) openly flirting with the sassy saucepot widow Sadie Tompkins (Barbara Windsor) as his battleaxe wife, Cora (Joan Sims), looks on with disdain.

In 1968, an East-West agreement is established to halt nuclear proliferation.

In 1963, at the height of the Cold War, professional thief-turned-CIA-agent Napoleon Solo extracts Gaby Teller, daughter of Dr.

Late in 1969, a brilliant young United States Navy intelligence officer, Charles Rone, finds his commission revoked so that he can be recruited into an espionage mission to retrieve a fake letter showing an alliance between the West and the Soviet Union against China.

An attractive British Home Office assistant named Judith Farrow is on vacation on the Caribbean island of Barbados after ending a failed love affair with married group captain Richard Paterson of the British air attaché in Paris.

In 1991, the US and China are on the verge of a major trade agreement, with the President due to visit China to seal the deal.