Review of A Most Wanted Man (2014) by Jdkoerner — 24 Jul 2014

The polar opposite of Zero Dark Thirty.

The picture opens on a title over a wall being washed by the tide. It announces that the planning for 9/11 took place in Germany without interference, and this must never be allowed to happen again.

So much for the stakes and the motivations.

There follows a film with virtually no action and only as much dialogue as needed to advance the plot. There's a little chit chat, some exposition, and then waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. We wait silently watching the characters wait silently watching other characters make up their minds. There is one sequence which may have been 5 minutes long, with 4 of them silent. There is a sense of things happening in real time.

However, the longer we wait the more we learn, and the more we learn the more we care.

Hoffman's character is the polar opposite of the bombastic CIA agent he played in Charlie Wilson's War. Don't come expecting that, or the ripe bluster of The Master. Everyone speaks quietly in Hamburg where the film is set, and Hoffman perhaps the most quietly, muttering in a strange Germanic accent, but also very invested, and more and more so as the story winds tighter and tighter.

We could do worse than have this as the final performance of Philip Seymour Hoffman. He goes out on a high note, but an understated one as well.