Review: A Most Wanted Man

by. Trevor Kirkendall
★★

The one thing I couldn’t help but think about the entire time I watched “A Most Wanted Man” was that this would be one of the last times we’d see Philip Seymour Hoffman. I try not to play favorites when it comes to movies and my reviews, but it’s very difficult for me to do that when it involves Hoffman. I always thought he was one of the most talented actors working in Hollywood. Had he not succumbed to his addictions, perhaps we could have had the “greatest of all time” conversation later in his life. At minimum, we could have had the “Mount Rushmore of Acting” conversation with Hoffman’s name included. Alas, “A Most Wanted Man” will be one of the last times we go to the movies to see something new from Hoffman.

In “A Most Wanted Man” Hoffman plays Günther Bachmann, a spy operating out of Hamburg, Germany. Title cards inform us that Germans are on top of intelligence in the years following 9/11 in hopes that the errors made prior to the attacks don’t happen again. Bachmann and his group pick up on some intel that a Chechen Muslim named Issa (Grigoriy Dobrygin) has entered Germany and they want to know why.

Issa seeks the help of a lawyer named Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams) who is sympathetic to foreigners looking to leave their home countries (terrorist or not). Issa is trying to get some money out of an account his father has at a bank run by Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe). Bachmann and his team watch from afar trying to put the pieces together and figure out exactly what Issa has come to Germany to do. Of course, whenever terrorists are involved, the Americans want to have stand over everyone’s shoulders, thus Bachmann has to play nice with a diplomat, Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright), from the American Embassy in Berlin.

“A Most Wanted Man” shares many of the same characteristics with other films in the spy thriller genre. It’s very quiet, the sets are dimly lit, and the script is full of much more plot instead of story. These parts all can work well together as evident in other great spy films such as “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy,” based on a novel by John le Carré as is “A Most Wanted Man.” Unfortunately what we have here is a film that’s a whole lot of spy and not enough thriller.

Most spy movies are very patiently paced to give the audience a chance to unlock the enigma at the same speed as our protagonists. Sometimes, they may seem like they’re running long, but most of the time the film’s climax makes the pace worthwhile. With “A Most Wanted Man,” I feel that the amount of content building in the plot is very light by comparison to other spy films. The screenplay, by Andrew Bovell, gets bogged down by consistently repeating many of the same plot points we’ve already heard. This is a classic case where the film could have easily been trimmed by around 20 minutes or so and would have been much more effective.

It appears, they leave this excess filler in the film to allow for character development; unfortunately, the focus is on the wrong people. I wanted to know more about Bachmann and his backstory. What little comes up is usually in conversations between he and Sullivan, yet it’s never explored to any depth. Instead, the focus is directed toward Annabel and Issa, which ends up doing little in terms of the story.

Director Anton Corbijn has already shown his proficiency within the spy thriller genre with the excellent 2010 film “The American.” But, with “A Most Wanted Man,” Corbijn seems to have lost sight about what works and what doesn’t when it comes to this very specific genre. Hoffman’s immaculate ability to lose himself in a character is enough to salvage an error filled screenplay, but a director still needs to do his part. In a film that’s all-plot-and-little-story, Corbijn needs to shift his focus off the characters and into the plot. This is something he’s done before with “The American” but fails to achieve here.

That being said, Hoffman is once again outstanding in his performance. That is no surprise. What is new is that this is it for him (other than the next two films in “The Hunger Games” series). Yet while outstanding, this is far from his best work. 

On another positive note, the film is pieced together with razor sharp proficiency thanks to industry veteran Claire Simpson who has already one won Oscar (“Platoon”) and cut another film from a le Carré novel (“The Constant Gardner”).

“A Most Wanted Man” is where we say goodbye to one of the legends of acting. It’s just too bad it’s not a better film. Fans of spy thrillers should enjoy it though, even if the pace is much more patient than a typical film in the genre. Other than Hoffman, I’m not sure why there would be much of a reason to go out of your way to see this one.