A Most Wanted Man is a spy movie based on a John le Carré
novel, just like the most recent Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. It feels like a long
drink of a good whiskey – rich, smooth and full of flavor, also discreetly explosive.
Not for kids –who will choke to death, neither for noisy beer drinkers.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman is the spy here. His character, Günther
Bachmann, is a German intelligence veteran who, after 9/11, has slowly created
a web of informants within the Hamburg Islamic community. Without spectacular
actions or torturing suspects, he is not out there looking for big detentions –
he wants to see the big picture and patiently follow the thread that feeds
terrorism. Chain-smoker, heavy drinker type and weary of the job and its
disappointments, Bachmann has his eyes set on Issa Karpov, a half Chechen/half Russian
Muslim who is suspect of being a radical jihadist. Issa arrives illegally to Hamburg
with unknown reasons. Bachmann superiors and also the Americans want him to be
detained immediately before he may contact other terrorists. Bachmann disagrees:
he wants to learn his motives.
Following his instincts, Bachmann labors a plot to turn Issa’s
immigration lawyer – beautiful and effective Rachel McAdams – into his ally. Issa
is a broken man, he learns, tortured by Chechens and Russians, he is the
inheritor of big money deposited in a Hamburg bank by his corrupt father, a man
whom he despises. Bachmann gets convinced that Issa is not a terrorist but, being
a practical man, he does not see a problem in using his money as bait to catch
a bigger fish – a respectable Muslim scholar who, apparently, has secretly helped
to fund terrorism through the years without being directly involved. Bachmann
also thinks that he can be used as a valuable source of information within the
terrorist network.
As we find out, all this patient needlework by Bachmann might
have been possible in a less chaotic world, or at least in the pre 9/11 world. After
the fiasco, intelligence services have just become too heavy handed, needing immediate
results. The movie implies that capturing suspects and presumably using torture
is seen as a simpler path to those ends. Bachmann, with his decent and surgical
approach, wants to save misfortune to his subjects. But he is too easy to betray
by his own and his even more powerful allies, the Americans. He is on his way
to another disappointment.
Dutch director Anton Corbijn, who was also in charge of The
American, works better in the cold. Hamburg is shown as an impersonal and
indifferent city but you wonder if this is not just a façade for an ebullient underworld. And you may say the
same about the characters. Willem Dafoe as a Bank president is a man living in a
padded luxury but silently frustrated, willing to get involved in a spy plot
and follow a beautiful lawyer into the dilapidated apartments of the poor.
Rachel McAdams, usually known for her perky, over sweetened persona, provides a
measured performance as an immigration lawyer fully committed to her protégés.
However, you start to figure out if it is not something of a more human touch, what
she is really after. Robin Wright, as the American intelligence officer, is maybe
the key to understand A Most Wanted Man. She uses her charm to gain trust from her
German counterpart but she has her own agenda. The real villain in the story, her
character exemplifies the relationship of the US intelligence with Europe, as
the friend-spying scandals with Germany, France and other countries have come
to surface – teasing them up with their resources and friendly manners,
secretly using them and aspiring to have them under control.
Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Bachmann is more of an open book here,
all brains and calculation on the outside, secretly caring and compassionate inside.
A man fully committed to “make the world a safer place” as he says, a mission
that transcends himself. Hoffman saved one of his best performances for last.
