A Most Wanted Man is a coherent and thought-provoking adaptation of the 2008 John Le Carré novel, set in Hamburg, where Le Carré himself was an agent. But A Most Wanted Man suggests how times have changed. We have left the Cold War behind and are in post-911 Hamburg where it is spy master Günther Bachmann’s (Philip Seymour Hoffman) allies that are troubling him. Director Anton Corbijn’s (The American, Control) film takes a while to get going but gradually builds to a powerful climax. Perhaps the most thrilling aspect of this cerebral thriller, however, is the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s performance in this, his last film.
In the basement of a modern office block, equiped with modern surveillance instruments, Günther Bachmann and his team are watching a Chechen Muslim terrorist suspect, Issa Karpov (Grigorly Dobrygin). Karpov has recently landed in Hamburg and is wandering through the port. They are also tracking a young Human Rights lawyer, Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), who escorts the hooded young man to a Muslim family’s flat.
The team is also interested in the activities of a cagey Muslim philanthropist, Dr Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi) who is attempting to gain German citizenship. Bachmann suspects that Abdullah’s bonafide charitable contributions are a front for channelling funds to a terriorist group, but cannot yet prove it. The Karpov trail leads them to private banker Tommy Blue (Willem Dafoe), whose late father had laundered money for Karpov’s father.
For German security official Dieter Mohr (Rainer Bock), and the disingenuous American diplomatic attaché Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright), the sins of the fathers have landed in the laps of their offspring. Bachmann is less certain and worries that a premature arrest of any suspect will wreck his intricate plan. The team is negotiating deals with Karpov and Abdullah, while turning Richter and Blue into informers. If the plan works, it will enable Bachmann to track down the terrorists higher up in the chain and inflict damage at the operation’s source.
We learn that Bachmann has been duped before by the Americans and it cost the lives of his spies and informants. Careful not to suffer the same fate again, he plays a cat-and-mouse game with Sullivan and Mohr, trying to play one off against the other to buy time for his plan.
The relatively complex web of intrigue is easy to follow thanks to Andrew Bovell’s intelligent script. Corbijn’s typical unhurried, hesitant and ambiguous direction might infuriate the impatient viewer, but he does allow you to take everything in and gradually digest it.
This leaves us time to appreciate the subtle performances, starting with Hoffman’s. You could swear that Hoffman has been at the job in Hamburg for decades, so at home is he in his claustrophobic world.
Pale, chain smoking, Scotch guzzling and overweight from too many fast food dinners at a stake-out, Bachmann is living proof that being a spy is as bad for your health as is being an actor. You can almost feel the physical pressure as well as the mental pressure of the job.
There are impressive performances, too, from Rachel McAdams as an idealistic Shami Chakrabarti-type who is in way over her head. We have never seen Dafoe quite as vulnerable as his reserved banker, living in his father’s shadow as if waiting for the inevitable day of reckoning. When he is forced to turn informant for Bachmann, he almost welcomes the opportunity to exorcise the past.
Cinematographer Benoit Delhomme and Corbijn, who was a famous stills photographer before turning film director, make Hamburg feel like a real place with a different mood emanating from each location. The grainy, murky alleyways of the Communist era films might be gone, but with their precise framing and subtle use of colour, Delhomme finds the post-9ll equivalent.
But effective as they are, the actors, the locations, decor and the cinematography struggle for authenticity when a German spy is played by an A-list American actor speaking with his German colleagues in English. A Most Wanted Man’s most intriguing contribution to the espionage genre is the suggestion that it’s not the enemy, but the allies that you have to worry about.
Joyce Glasser – MT film reviewer
