Critics reviews

A Most Wanted Man is based on a John le Carré novel, and – like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy a couple of years ago – it's absorbing, if perhaps a bit too languid... A Most Wanted Man could've been richer – more urgent, more ambivalent about its hero – but there's something there, a certain sinewy texture.

Reviews of the film have focused on Philip Seymour Hoffman's powerful performance as Gunther, but what's more crucial is that Gunther is the star in the first place... Because the film focuses so closely on Gunther, it has the leisure to make him more than an agent of the plot. He's a real, complex person, whose strengths and weaknesses are brought out in the film by a counterpart every bit his equal: Martha, as envisioned by Robin Wright.

Though the novel was an ensemble strong on characterisation, Bovell's script is caught between remaining faithful and needing a central character for which to root. The result is a double-edged sword: while other talents like Nina Hoss, Willem Dafoe and Daniel Brühl are frustratingly, if suitably lost in the compromises to breadth, Bachmann's elevation to chief protagonist allows Hoffman a fittingly chameleonic swansong, as a man who looks beaten before the battle's even begun.

Mr. Hoffman's intensity is well served by Mr. le Carré's intricate web-weaving and Mr. Corbijn's complementary visual style, the sinister doings dovetailing with the dark tone and colors. Mr. Hoffman's performance is so finely etched — and the story so irresistible — that the film becomes, almost inescapably, something of a last testament.

Though le Carré’s novel carries a modern hook by exploring the tattered intelligence community in the wake of 9/11, Hoffman imbues his character with an elegant quality that goes beyond topicality to suggest the timeless empathy within us all.

This adaptation of a John le Carré novel works smashingly as a suspense film, a mood piece, and a vehicle for the late Philip Seymour Hoffman... Corbijn employs wide-screen framing to striking dramatic effect, using it to emphasize the characters' confinement in tight spaces and their vulnerability in open ones.

The film never gets totally beyond this familiar treatment of spy tropes, but it remains a riveting, handsomely crafted bit of pulp, a comparatively realist companion to the Bourne movies... And while it's unfortunate to see Hoffmann's final leading role defined by such a stodgy bundle of tics, all united under a baffling quasi-Teutonic accent, the performance has its moments, peaking when two hours worth of pent-up frustration finally explode.

If there’s a thrill here, it’s not so much in the plot’s gradual accumulation of twists and turns, but rather in the way le Carre’s bleak, unyielding worldview seeps into your nervous system.