"A Most Wanted Man" is the second film featuring Philip Seymour Hoffman to premiere after his death on the 2nd of February earlier this year. "God's Pocket" was the first to be released, but "A Most Wanted Man" was the first to that had a wider release (it is worth noting however that both films were screened at Sundance before Hoffman's death). It was odd at first seeing him there, knowing he died so many months earlier. So long ago that it is almost already a distant memory, I've already seen his face on the Academy Awards under the In Memoriam tribute sequence, yet there he is. Up on the screen. As brilliant as always.
And he his brilliant, he is undoubtedly the best thing about this film. I was worried it was going to bad, and that Hoffman was going to give a bad performance but I was foolish to worry. He nails the part to such a degree that some of the supporting cast fades when he's around. Grigoriy Dobrygin who plays Issa Karpov is the best example of this. When left on his own or with Rachel McAdams he gives a perfectly decent performance, but put him in a scene with Hoffman and he disappears. You start to almost feel sorry for him, and get even more respect for Hoffman who is obviously superior. Unfortunately those exact scenes does bring down the overall quality of the film. Not to a noticeable degree, but it's still there.
"A Most Wanted Man" follows a German counter-terrorist team in Hamburg, more specifically aimed against the Muslim community. Günther Bachmann (Hoffman) is in charge of the team who according to the German government does not exist, he is on the tail of one of the major funders of al-Qaeda. A man indirectly responsible for thousands of deaths in the Middle-East. This film is at its core very much a spy thriller. The entire film is about gaining intelligence and manipulating others to get even more of it. The film that first comes to mind if I were to compare "A Most Wanted Man" to another is "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy". It's slow-paced, it's patient, it's about the characters. You don't really care about finding out who is funding al-Qaeda, you don't really care about the mysteries the team has to solve, you care about them. About how they do it. It's a character piece perfectly brought to life by Philip Seymour Hoffman, a master of his craft.
Overall this film is very, very good. It's not one of the bests out there, but it's one of the ones you just have to watch. One thing that did annoy me, however, is how they dealt with languages in the film. The film is set in Germany, and the main cast are all mostly Germans. Even so you almost never hear any spoken German. This could be fine had it not been for the fact that some of the actors have decided to put on accents (Hoffman included). It makes the film seem more like a play than a film. When you have the possibility of subtitles, use it, there is no need to fake a language to make it seem more fitting. Either go all English and just pretend it's all run through a translation matrix, or go completely native. But that might just be my two eurocents. Still, watch it, if for nothing else than to watch Philip Seymour Hoffman on the big screen just one more time. It is definitely worth the experience.
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