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.