Sometimes a franchise runs too long, becoming repetitive and joyless. That’s the feeling I had sitting through the nearly three hours of The Dark Knight Rises in which even the villain seemed depressed and, truth be told, only mildly interested in his goal to explode a nuclear device in New York.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy returns to the Cold War days of early 1970s and the knowledge by the head of Britain's Secret Service, Mi6 that a mole has infiltrated to the highest level of the headquarters called "The Circus." The second sentence spoken by the chief officer, called Control, is, "Trust no one"—good advice for a surreptitious, dangerous investigation.