I t is a truism that, as they get older, angry young radicals tend to relax into complacent conservatism. The fire of youth fades to a dull glow, or flickers out altogether; the injustice that once seemed so offensive becomes more bearable, perhaps ameliorated by the trappings of success. As he has aged, he has become more angry, not less. Far from dimming in his ninth decade, the flame of his rage burns hot and strong.

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George Smiley : I want to talk about loyalty, Toby. Control recruited you, didn't he? He found you starving in a museum in Vienna, a wanted man. He saved your life, I heard. And yet, when the time came It's understandable, perhaps, with your war experience. You survived this long, I suppose, because of your ability to change sides, to serve any master. Easterhase : What's George Smiley : It's about which master you've been serving, Toby. George Smiley : And that's how I know he can be beaten.
The Ipcress File (1965)
It premiered in competition at the 68th Venice International Film Festival. A critical and commercial success, it was the highest-grossing film at the British box office for three consecutive weeks. The meeting is a trap, and Prideaux is shot by Russian-employed agents attempting to capture him. Amidst the international incident that follows, Control and his right-hand man George Smiley are forced into retirement and Control dies of illness shortly afterward. Smiley's wife, Ann, is having an affair with his colleague Bill Haydon and has moved out. Despite Control and Smiley's misgivings, their successors had already begun a secret operation—"Witchcraft"—to obtain highly sensitive information from the Soviet Union , which is in turn being traded with the CIA for American intelligence. Smiley is enlisted by Cabinet Office civil servant Oliver Lacon to investigate a claim by Ricki Tarr , a British spy turned fugitive, that for years there has been a mole in a senior role in the Circus, a suspicion that Control had also held but had not shared with Smiley.
Model philosophers measuring everything they do against the word of God or Karl Marx? They're not. They're just a bunch of seedy, squalid bastards like me …civil servants playing cowboys and Indians to brighten up their rotten little lives. A rebel. For Palmer, service in the MOD is a penance of sorts for his criminal exploits while in the British Army, rather than a career plan. He shops in supermarkets, likes cooking omelettes are a speciality and wants a pay-rise so that he can upgrade his kitchen utensils. Tasked with investigating the brainwashing of sixteen British scientists, Palmer is kidnapped and subjected to the IPCRESS conditioning method, in an attempt to turn him into a double agent. Resisting the process, Palmer purposefully subjects himself to pain while chanting one of Caine's most iconic quotes, "My. The voice-over in the trailer for Kevin Costner and Gene Hackman's thriller about a US Naval officer investigating a murder is pure eighties overkill.