Trenchant swansong for Hoffman

POWERFUL STUDY: Banker Thomas Brue (Dafoe) and anti-terrorism boss G�nther Bachmann (Seymour Hoffman).

POWERFUL STUDY: Banker Thomas Brue (Dafoe) and anti-terrorism boss G�nther Bachmann (Seymour Hoffman).

Published Oct 24, 2014

Share

A MOST WANTED MAN

DIRECTOR: Anton Corbijn

CAST: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright, Grigoriy Dobrygin, Daniel Bruhl, Homayoun Ershadi, Nina Hoss

CLASSIFICATION: 16 L

RUNNING TIME: 122 minutes

RATING: ****

 

 

 

A MOST Most Wanted Man swirls around Philip Seymour Hoffman’s powerful study of loneliness, though he is not the titular character.

Dripping in cynicism, the film is a modern spy thriller which reminds us that John le Carré writes good books, and the world has very quickly and conveniently forgotten the whole concept of rendering spies to the mercy of America’s “war on terror” with a capital T.

The titular character is a half-Chechen half-Russian man who illegally enters Hamburg, Germany and tries to lay claim to his father’s apparently ill-gotten gains.

Different departments within German security agencies all want access to the man and it becomes a bunfight of words to see who gets to lay their hands on the scared, scarred individual.

First, though, they have to figure out his identity and motives and through it all Günther Bachmann (Hoffman), German head of an anti-terrorism unit working under the radar, suggests caution.

Either the man is an oppressed victim or he is a potential terrorist hell-bent on destruction, and Bachmann wants time to figure it out rather than go in guns blazing and miss an opportunity to perhaps net bigger fish.

Once Issa Karpov (Dobrygin) is identified, Bachmann uses idealistic, slightly naive human rights lawyer Annabel Richter (MacAdams) to gain access to the young man, and things become emotionally twisted as the two form a complicated relationship (since she knows he is being watched and he is completely at her mercy for shelter, communication and pretty much his life).

Bachmann’s rumpled cynicism is in contrast to his sidekick, the calm, sophisticated Irna Frey (Hoss), but neither of them has the political clout to stand up to their bosses in the German domestic intelligence agency. Things turn downright complicated when the CIA start insisting on their right to intervene, and though Bachmann instinctively doesn’t trust the high-ranking Martha Sullivan (Wright), he goes along with her suggestions to keep up his access to Karpov.

And that’s not even the half of it.

Anton Corbijn manages to tell a very complicated story in a fairly simple way by concentrating on the human side of big ideas.

Bachmann has to deal with bosses who want absolute and definitive answers, yet he lives in a world of shades of grey, literally and physically. Hamburg is filmed as a city of diverse districts, yet without colour and contrast it’s all nice and First World on the surface.

But this is no longer the world his bosses played their Cold War spy games in. Now it is a world of cameras and porous borders, gentrification and people from different cultures up in those tiny apartments. Then there’s the international banking interests being represented by Willem Dafoe’s character, Thomas Brue.

Also, strangely enough, even though the plot swirls around the hunt to establish the motives of one person, there is not one big “bad guy” to concentrate on. There are multiple interests and interpretations and everyone believes their own way is the only correct way.

At the centre of the story stands Bachmann – keenly aware of multiple ways of viewing people and problems, overweight, emotionally drained, focused on getting his job right this time, and and above all alone and lonely. Isolated by his views, he knows there is a right way to handle this case, if only he was allowed to do the job he has been appointed and figure it out.

When Hoffman finally lets out an exasperated F-word he loads it with more emotion than many other actors can pack into an hour-and-a-half and you just remember over again what a loss this is. You also have to wonder how much of the character’s depressed attitude towards his job was simply a mirror for the actor’s emotional state.

The film is a bittersweet testament to living out a character, rather than acting, and a reminder that a prophet is seldom seen as such among his own people.

If you liked The Constant Gardener or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, you will like this.

Related Topics: