There’s always a price to pay for getting what we want, though the cost of our choices is rarely apparent. For Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), informing others of this barter forms one of his daily deeds. His furtive operations within an anti-terrorism branch of the German government are so secret that only a select few know of its existence. However, the intelligence he cultivates, the sources he handles and the powerbrokers he navigates all justify his perpetually difficult bargain.
Entering Hamburg from Turkey via ship and looking every bit the disheveled threat, Chechen Muslim Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin, How I Ended This Summer) is Bachmann’s latest person of interest. As he negotiates with CIA operative Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright, The Congress) and his own unsympathetic agency head Dieter Mohr (Rainer Bock, The Book Thief) about their plan of attack, Karpov seeks the assistance of lawyer Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams, About Time) and banker Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe, The Grand Budapest Hotel). The concurrent peering into the dealings of Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi, Zero Dark Thirty), a respected Muslim leader suspected of laundering charitable donations to fund terrorist cells, adds a further layer of complications.
Late in A Most Wanted Man, Bachmann addresses his espionage colleagues around a round table with words of warning and caution, advocating for calm, care and quiet in their approach. In crafting a feature around the character, as based on John le Carré’s novel, director Anton Corbijn (The American) takes heed of this stoic plea. His film is contemplative and considered in its terse thrills, and economical yet effective in sketching out the boundaries of a clandestine existence in which grey is the only colour.
With splashes of amber and brown to break the monotonous aesthetic oppression, in cinematographer Benoît Delhomme’s (Lawless) dustily bleak images Corbijn stays true to this vision. Working in tandem, precise framing alternates between thrusting the key players to points of prominence and dwarfing them in the texture of their setting. Just as screenwriter Andrew Bovell (Edge of Darkness) doesn’t just want viewers to follow but to think about what is being gained and lost every step of the way, the filmmaker doesn’t want the audience to merely watch but to peer into a problem of raising stakes and spiraling consequences.
It is here that Hoffman earns the camera’s and director’s unrelenting scrutiny, in one of his final roles. Part of the reason the Oscar-winning actor was so highly regarded as he climbed to the heights of his craft was for his formidable talent in imparting meaning in even the most subtle of mannerisms, and here he yet again delivers in the obsessive, empathetic figure his protagonist becomes. His supports, particularly brief, crucial work from Daniel Brühl (Rush) and Nina Hoss (Barbara), also excel; Dobrygin and Mehdi Dehbi (The Other Son), the latter as another pawn wrapped up in his maneuverings, similarly effortlessly hold their own. There is nary a wrong foot placed amongst the well-corralled cast, though it is Hoffman who constantly commands attention.
Correspondingly, as A Most Wanted Man ebbs and wanes with the energy of its star, both the plot and the performance glacially paced while retaining momentum, its outcome has both the stain of the inevitable and the thrall of the resonant. That’s yet another of the film’s deliberations of cost, this time of making a tense spy effort perhaps best suited to the page in its minutiae but ably enlivened by a steely director with a specific eye, a solid script strongly espousing its themes, and suitably striking portrayals.
Rating: 3 ½ out of 5 stars
A Most Wanted Man
Director: Anton Corbijn
UK / USA / Germany, 2014, 121 mins
Release date: July 31
Distributor: Roadshow
Rated: M
Actors:
Director:
Format:
Country:
Release:
