The movie is an adaptation of a novel by John Le Carre. For who's not acquainted with John Le Carre's work, chronologically: "The Spy Who Came in From the Cold", "The Russia House", "The Tailor from Panama", "The Constant Gardener", "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy" (and maybe others). To summarize, we're talking about a British author of spy thrillers, but on a subgenre that's totally opposed to Ian Fleming and anything related to James Bond. To be more precise, we have stories that relate to the activity of various intelligence services, stories that are placed in a real historical context, and which "feature" less action and more social drama. In "A Most Wanted Man" the setting is Hamburg, where a division of the German intelligence is involved in an operation targeting a possible thread on financial support for terrorist activities. In the middle of their investigation they suddenly get an unexpected help, in the form of ... a Chechen illegal immigrant, suspect of terrorist activities, freshly "unloaded" in the Hamburg docks, and who could finally lead to "the big fish" (to approximately quote the movie). Well, with the minor condition to be left free. Which of course seems to be a problem for the internal security. And I already told the whole story :) Sort of ...
Again, for who's not acquainted with John Le Carre, given also the "mega-spoiler" above, there is high chance to get bored by the movie. As it happened to me long, long ago for instance with "Russia House" (leaving aside that that movie wasn't very good anyway). However, if you know what to expect = a relatively short-spanned action development (with maybe some flashbacks), during which you have a ton of character build-up including a fine touch of psychological analysis, and you might get anytime a life irony hit like the right man at the wrong place (or the opposite), then ... Well, you got the right movie :)
Anton Corbijn, the director, manages to get in "A Most Wanted Man" something that he wasn't able in "The American". I'm not very inspired now to describe the result. But, if you've seen both movies, probably you'll know what I want to say. It's true that the typical John Le Carre based script helps more than the story in the other movie. It's more solid and it has a proper ending, so it shouldn't cause long yawns and a "what was that ?!" after the final credits. But it's also the case for the directing to help the script here. I think it's the best adaptation I've seen for Le Carre. It keeps a good balance between the romantic illusion present in spy novel, and the real life coldness that constantly hits back. To compare with, "The Constant Gardener" had mostly the first, and "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" too much of the second. A solid help in all this comes from the exceptional cast, starting with the late Philip Seymour Hoffman unfortunately in one of his last roles, who shows again how wide was the range he had as an actor.
I'll close with a personal remark, getting back to the intro. It's an awkward feeling to write a review for a movie that revolves around the activity of a terrorist cell, in such an unfortunate moment when almost all the media channels are full of debates on similar topics. And the awkwardness doesn't necessarily come from the associated topic, but from the fact that a movie, or well - the book behind it - a fictional piece of work after all, seems to be more decent and even more credible as approach regarding the complexity and the implications of this type of situations compared to plenty talk-shows or briefings I heard on various news channels.
Rating: 4 out of 5
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