A Most Wanted Man

The impact of the Sept. 11 attacks are still felt all around the world. Government buildings, airports, and Hamburg, the city where Mohammed Atta and his associates planned their 2001 attack, have heightened security protocols. Even a decade later, 9/11 keeps intelligence officers in the German port city on high alert as Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman, The Master, God’s Pocket) runs an anti-terrorism unit that’s all about biding their time and pulling in the biggest fish they can.

It’s the sort of realistic spy work that doesn’t always make for good cinema. Bachmann’s methods are slow and meticulous; he takes his time in order to build a chain of sources so vast that he can topple the whole organization.

It’s a trait that runs throughout the film to a fault, as the audience follows Bachmann around the city grooming his pathway to higher-profile suspects. As he chases after Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), an immigrant seeking asylum in the German Islamic community, Bachmann’s search takes its time, winding through his network and strategies. He makes a complicated play involving Karpov’s human rights attorney Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams, Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows, Midnight in Paris) to use Karpov to topple a target his team has been tracking for months.

The movie was adapted from a 2008 novel by John le Carré, and there’s definitely the same slow boil that was present in another le Carré adaptation, “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.” Both films focus on a protagonist with palpable weariness and a fabulous cast that can’t quite shake the complexity of its story.

The plot, although complicated and a bit dry, does manage for a steadily absorbing and compelling story. “A Most Wanted Man” falters in constantly having to deal with and explain the complexity of its spy work, never managing to fully settle its focus on the characters. The movie is methodical in its hunt of every fact, number, and figure, while leaving the personality of its cast in the background.

Though his accent isn’t perfect, this is another great performance from the late Hoffman. He’s the perfect embodiment of a cigarette-fueled anti-hero, convinced of what he’s doing in a post-9/11 world. His turn as a dilapidated intelligence worker helps to carry the plot through even its more tedious moments.

Although there isn’t too much he can do to untwist the plot from all the slow-paced, brooding turns it needs to take, it’s admirably textured; taking leaps so that audiences don’t get everything spelled out for them. But in the end, “A Most Wanted Man” stays too entrenched in its stiff analytical side, and not enough into the personality of its players. It’ll make for great fair for those looking for a unhurried summer spy thriller. But unlike the politics it founds itself on, it won’t leave much of a lasting effect.

Verdict: A gradually enthralling spy thriller rooted meticulous counter-intelligence strategy. Emphasis on “gradually.”