Review: A Most Wanted Man

With this being the last leading role of the late Philip Seymour-Hoffman, A Most Wanted Man was carrying the weight of expectation. There was also a danger that it would be received as just that: Seymour-Hoffman’s final starring performance, and thus celebrated regardless of its quality. Thankfully, the finished article is worthy of praise both for the actor’s efforts and its own genuine merit.

Hamburg: the present day. 9/11 is still fresh in the minds of the security services, whose petty rivalries and bungling incompetence allowed the Twin Towers attack to be planned in the German port town at the beginning of the century. Between unwelcome American spooks and humourless German secret service officials we follow Günther Bachmann. Günther (Seymour-Hoffman) is part of a small espionage team that cultivates informants from within the nation’s Muslim community. They start from the bottom up, as Günther tells us that it takes a minnow to catch a barracuda and a barracuda to catch a shark. The plot revolves around Günther’s plan to follow a recently arrived Chechen terrorist to ensnare a businessman suspected of funnelling charity funds to militant groups. Günther’s Western rivals have different plans.

All eyes are doubtless of Philip Seymour-Hoffman, who was so critically celebrated in life and whose death this year shocked. He masterfully controls the screen without dominating. His typical brooding presence is not the braggadocio flurry of DiCaprio or the flamboyant madness of Nicholson, rather a realist series of flinches and shuffles which carry piercing eyes so full of gravitas. This translates as an extraordinary ‘watchability’, an unexplainable X factor on-screen. His Günther is depressed, anonymous, a chain-smoker who perhaps is fond of the piano. That and whiskey (or whisky, I didn’t see the national derivation of his brands I’m afraid). His old overcoat shabbily covers a man who soldiers on in a work environment so full of evil and madness despite the personal consequences. Frankly, I cannot see DiCaprio or Nicholson carrying it off – think of Oldman as Smiley but more at home in a greasy kebab shop.

Adapted from a John Le Carré novel, AMWM is largely what you would expect. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy comparisons are wholly appropriate. It is slow, contemplative, the grey apartment buildings of Hamburg matching the grey stubble-flecked face of bloated Günther (Günther seems a perfect name for a fat man for some reason). Locations are old postwar blocks, grimy wooden bars and bare bunkers for housing grabbed suspects. The cinematography supports the setting: functional, washed, still. The story is one where only the most necessary of details are explained, but the plot is actually fairly simple in case you are afraid of having to join too many dots. I can imagine it working even better as a book: in film format, I almost wondered what it was trying to say.

The overall sense, therefore, is that of cynical nihilism. The pointlessness is pervading, the utter futility of this century’s Great Game hammered home visually, thematically and atmospherically. It definitely intends to question what our secret services get up to, and whether the ends justify the means, but goes one step further and asks what are the ends anyway? Common tropes of the espionage genre are present, and maybe this is an updated Spy Who Came in from the Cold. If you are a fan of the James Bond end of spy films and detest the boring Carré style, then avoid AMWM. But if you’re not an idiot, book a ticket now.

SPOILER ALERT: The ending distinctly resembles that of Monty Python’s Holy Grail, where a few coppers jump out of a squad car and arrest King Arthur for murder as he leads the charge on a French castle. This finale is not, unfortunately, quite as witty or anarchic, although similarly subversive.

Review: Lucy

Filmic Frenchman Luc Bresson has had a prolific career, output-wise. This year alone he is involved with three films. The only one which he has directed, as well as written and produced, is Lucy, a sci-fi action-thriller which seeks to say more than it does.

American expat Lucy (Scarlett Johansson) is coerced by her cowboy hat wearing douchebag of a boyfriend into delivering a mysterious briefcase to an even more mysterious Mr. Jang. Mr. Jang, you will not be surprised to hear, is an organised crime boss in Taiwan. The briefcase, you will be even less surprised to hear, contains drugs. Our naive Western protagonist soon finds herself thrown into the heart of the city’s underworld, beaten by Mr. Jang’s overfed henchman (always impeccably dressed, though – somehow their victims’ blood only ever splashes on their faces, hands and cuffs, never touches the suits) and taken captive.

All the while, we watch a scene from a Parisian university. Morgan Freeman, in another role which epitomises sage (the possession of wisdom not the herb), delivers a lecture in human brain capacity. This professor Norman explains that we only use about ten percent of our brains, and theorises as to what would happen if it were to increase.

And then, just when Lucy didn’t think that her day could get any worse (she was well behind with her exam revision by this point), the sharkskin-wearing Al Capone of Taipei decides that she is to be a drug mule for a new narcotic. During captivity, however, she is kicked, releasing some of the CPH4 drug which has been stitched into her stomach. The effect that this has is to increase Lucy’s brain power – in 24 hours she will be operating at one hundred percent. Lucy gets mad. She kills a load of baddies, gets the drugs removed and flies to Europe to speak with Norman and get a hold of this crazy situation. Mr. Jang becomes decidedly disgruntled.

The story is obviously absurd. These days film executives seem to think that to make sci-fi more realistic for the audience, they must throw in some cod science rationalising the preposterous plot. Thus we have the professor character explaining, in terms that your average viewer will understand despite not possessing advanced scientific qualifications, that it is perfectly possible to fly or time travel or become a fish. The whole ‘we only use ten percent of our brain’ statement is deeply flawed (or so Wikipedia informs me), but because Lucy doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously I don’t begrudge the mumbo jumbo particularly. I do think, though, that by reining in the ridiculousness Besson could have said something interesting. As it is, the bits that make you pause to consider life and all that come very early on. Norman’s lecture takes us through human history and what we do with intelligence (‘we seem more concerned with having than being’), which is all pretty profound.

At the beginning Lucy’s plot is interspersed with narration from Norman and clips of events in nature. This mix of contemporary storyline, warm Freeman musings and National Geographic stock footage provides an unexpected and novel style. A riveting caper of a plot with philosophical thought about the nature of existence sure sounds good. However, Lucy descends into a smorgasbord of high-octane action sequences. It was all balanced so well initially, but the filmmakers simply abandoned the idiosyncratic montages in favour of cheap thrills. As the David Attenborough bits fall away we just watch martial arts in Asian prisons, car chases etc. The overblown shootouts, piles of bodies and characters being blasted around rooms by CGI force fields are straight out of a Summer blockbuster textbook.

Both Morgan Freeman and Scarlett Johansson are expected to pull off stellar performances, and so it is easy to overlook how well they go about their acting. It’s business as usual for Freeman – you know what to expect, and he delivers no less. But Johansson provides that emotional charge which takes a scene from stuff happening to stuff happening that we invest our emotions in. Her journey from terrified victim to ruthless survivor is worn like a mask on her face. Angelina Jolie was apparently the first choice, and I think that Lucy is improved immeasurably by an actor who can seem like a real human in these situations rather than a cardboard action figure. Choi-Mink Sik (Mr. Jang) has the necessary blend of urbane businessman and lunatic warlord, and looks a bit like a Korean Gary Oldman. Can’t say whether that was intentional or not. 

People have cited 2001, Inception and Leon (which starred the Gary Oldman featured in the above paragraph) when discussing Lucy. It is miles off those films in terms of intelligence, originality and entertainment. It feels like a waste of a promising spark of inspiration. Nonetheless there are some interesting scenes enhanced by captivating acting. The fundamental idea underpinning Lucy is how humans are evolving and where life will be long after we have gone. This gets you thinking about more than your immediate situation, as greater aspects of existence are highlighted for a couple of hours. It is incidentally this ability to transport you to a different place that makes cinema so powerful in the first place.