A.C.’s Review: A better title for A MOST WANTED MAN would be A MOST BORING FILM. This is movie is an alleged spy thriller with no thrills. Before I completely tear the movie apart I want to say that it’s lead Phillip Seymour Hoffman was an actor’s actor. He was no matinee pretty boy like Cruise or Pitt but he was the guy you called on when you needed to immerse themselves in the role. Whoever he’s playing you believe the character. When you see say Tom Cruise…you just think…oh there’s Tom Cruise playing an astronaut or such. Hoffman you believed was the role he was playing. A true loss in the acting world.
I firmly believe that
it’s only the presence of the late actor that got this film a wide release.
Typically you would expect a film like this to play in your local art house
theater.
Basically the whole
movie is about a German intelligence officer in Hamburg attempting to use a new
arrival in the city who may or may not be a Chechen terrorist to his advantage
to trap a Muslim cleric in an attempt to prove the cleric is actually a money
launderer for Al Quida. Aiding the Chechen is a lovely female lawyer played by Rachel McAdams who attempts to help the Chechen get his inheritance held
in a bank managed by Willem Defoe.
The whole boring mess
plods along at a glacial pace and almost nothing happens. Every time you think
something interesting might happen like…maybe the Chechen will reveal himself
to be a bad guy and murder McAdams it
doesn’t happen. When you think maybe Defoe
will co-coerce McAdams into sleeping
with him to grant the Chechen his money…it doesn’t happen. Nothing truly happens.
I’ve been in three
hour movies that flew right buy because the story or the spectacle are great.
None of that is here. It was a two hour movie and if I had a watch I would have
been checking it because I couldn’t believe how dragged out it was. It’s been
ages where I have felt like this during the movie. There is one interminable
segment where McAdams is being
interrogated that felt like it lasted half the movie.
And then at the climax
it turns out the whole point of the movie was Anti-American propaganda on how
we handle terror suspects as the “evil” Americans swoop in whisk the money
launder and the Chechen off to Guantanamo Bay or some other black ops prison
right out from under the noble Germans. If I am spoiling the ending its for
your own good as you will be sorry to waste time or money on this film.
A.C.’s Rating: Don't waste time or money on this film.
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