By JOE MORGENSTERN

The manifold pleasures of this remarkable film are cool, but intense. And they're intensely cool in the most modern sense when it comes to Gary Oldman as John le Carré's master spy George Smiley, who was portrayed in the classic 1979 BBC miniseries by Alec Guinness. This Smiley doesn't let out a word for the first 18 minutes; he simply takes everything in with his steady gaze and inscrutable mien. When he finally speaks, it's only to say he's retired. That's his way of resisting an invitation he knows he can't refuse—to find the Soviet mole who has infiltrated the uppermost echelon of the Circus, or the British Secret Intelligence Service. (Almost all of the suspects are guilty of something, though only one of them has spilled all the beans.)

Withholding Smiley's voice is one of many intriguing games that the film plays in the course of a Cold War mystery about spies playing sinister games of treason and personal betrayal. Tomas Alfredson, the Swedish director who brought new blood to the vampire genre with "Let the Right One In," proves to be an inspired choice for telling Le Carré's convoluted tale in less than 40% of the original 324-minute running time. And he worked from an exemplary adaptation, both lucid and succinct, by the husband-and-wife team of Peter Straughan and the late Bridget O'Connor. (That's not to say that I understood every part of the plot; a certain amount of confusion comes with Le Carré's territory.)

Where the miniseries relied on brilliant acting and long, spellbinding conversations in banal settings, the feature film relies on a narrative structure that sometimes feels impressionistic—shorter scenes with fluid flashbacks—while putting its own collection of topnotch performers in settings that are quietly spectacular for their visual design and their muted colors.

If I seem to be stressing form over content, it's because the movie's form serves the content so well. "You're a good watcher," one of the spies tells an earnest schoolboy. Mr. Alfredson and his cinematographer, Hoyte Van Hoytema (he shot "Let the Right One In"), make good watchers of us all by seducing us with striking images: trains moving slowly on parallel tracks in a marshaling yard; a baby nursing at its dead mother's breast; an airplane materializing out of nowhere on an isolated airstrip; an archive's hivelike architecture. Even a visual joke becomes an exercise in compulsive watching. It follows Smiley's visit to a veteran operative who keeps honeybees in his back yard. In a scene shot from the rear, we see the two men and another operative driving away in a sleek Citröen sedan. But there's a bee inside the car, and no way not to watch it flitting around until Smiley lowers a window to let it out.

None of this would warrant watching, of course, if it weren't for the cast that brings the drama to life. Some of the names—Colin Firth, John Hurt—are better known than others, while those others, including Mark Strong, Toby Jones, Ciarán Hinds, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy, are known for their excellence on the stage as well as the screen. Yet this version of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" turns on the presence of Mr. Oldman, and he is an actor of great experience and accomplishment who has finally found a film that fully deserves him.

His voice, so long and teasingly withheld, resonates with warm regret in its lower registers—Smiley has no illusions about the role of virtue in spy craft—and with icy fury when he raises it against stupidity or deceit. His face is more often than not a mask, which makes us grateful for every hint of a smile, and amazed by the range of feelings he can imply without actually expressing them. Alec Guinness was a more assertive presence, with a more mellifluous voice; his Smiley was also older, bordering on elderly, and quizzical bordering on owlish. Mr. Oldman's emphasis is on self-containment, but what his Smiley seems to contain is all the wisdom of a blighted world.