Had a film the caliber of A Most Wanted Man been made in the late ’60s or early ’70s, with a name such as Jean-Pierre Melville or Alan J. Pakula, directing it would already be a part of the Criterion Collection, celebrated for the last 40 years as a classic. Whether it will stand so tall 40 years from now is a mystery, but digging into a film of this nature in the midst of today’s modern cinematic age is pure joy for cinema lovers, and it’s the third film in a row from director Anton Corbijn (Control, The American) deserving of such lofty praise.
Adapted from John le Carré‘s novel of the same name by screenwriter Andrew Bovell (Edge of Darkness), A Most Wanted Man is a slow burn, spy thriller examining a post 9/11 world wherein the idea of friend or foe is a blurry, political mess and the idea of creating a safer world doesn’t carry as much weight as it should.
The film begins with a young man we quickly come to know as Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin). This half-Chechen, half-Russian has found his way to Hamburg, Germany and caught the attention of Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman), chief of a covert German intelligence unit, and his team. Karpov’s reason for being in Hamburg comes into question as Russian intelligence deem him a terrorist and his family has a dark and violent history, not to mention the change of his name from Ivan to Issa. For someone in Günther’s line of work it seems only reasonable to suspect his motivations are evil.
Added to the mix is a banker (Willem Dafoe) Karpov is attempting to contact, a local Muslim philanthropist (Homayoun Ershadi) believed to be funding terrorism and a social services lawyer (Rachel McAdams) attempting to help Karpov, believing him to be a tortured refugee. Then you have the German secret service and the American CIA working in parallel with Bachmann, though not necessarily together. Everyone has an agenda. Some are looking for credit, others to place blame and others to simply do what is “right”. When those lines cross it’s hard to tell the good guy from the bad guy or what the idea of good and bad even means in a day and age where the presumed threat to national security could be attributed to damn near anything.
Like Corbijn’s The American, the influence of Melville is felt once again even though Corbijn is on record saying he’s never even seen Melville’s Le Samourai of which The American seemed to pay homage. In a lot of ways that means the icy nature of Corbijn’s storytelling — the cold, bleak and slow build of his narratives — is something we should appreciate on an even greater level because it’s all him. While the marketing will attempt to convince you otherwise, A Most Wanted Man isn’t a fast-paced thriller in the traditional sense, even though the final climactic moments will send your heart racing as just about anything could happened. As such, it seems Corbijn and le Carre make for a perfect marriage of director and storyteller. Le Carre’s stories have never been about big explosions and action sequences, but more character and societal studies and with this thriller even the texture of the cobblestone streets of Hamburg add to the increasingly gripping atmosphere.
Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme (The Theory of Everything) is able to turn a watery rock wall in the film’s opening moments into something beautiful to look at, not to forget the feeling of claustrophobia due to sterile interiors glowing with fluorescent lighting and the tense intimacy of handheld and hidden cameras.
The performances are spot on with credit certainly due Hoffman and McAdams, while Dobrygin and Ershadi are wonderful in their subtleties, but it was performances from Robin Wright as an American embassy attache and Willem Dafoe as a private banker that really keep everything on edge. Each actor must convince the audience of their intentions and fears even though the story may cause you to question those intentions or perhaps believe them to be outright lies. It becomes a question of how you interpret the real world you live in and what you’ll make of the world presented in the movie. Just how safe is the world we’re living in and at what cost?
Crobijn’s films aren’t for everyone, though A Most Wanted Man might be his most accessible and I’d argue his very best. While he may not embrace the idea he’s keeping classical, European style storytelling alive I’m happy it comes to him so naturally. It will be interesting to see how its received years from now, once the superhero dust has settled and once the Movie Godz decide which films from this modern era stand the test of time and rise to the top.
