3 stars (out of 5)
The third film from rock-photographer-turned-director Anton Corbijn (after his Control and The American) is a filming of John Le Carré’s vaguely-based-on-fact 2008 novel that has gained much attention, as it features the last fully-completed performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman, and it’s a shame that his final bow is in such a glum and sour drama. But what do you expect from Le Carré? All his filmed novels (The Russia House, The Tailor Of Panama, The Constant Gardener and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, of course) are like this: dark, ponderously humourless and often distinctly hard to follow.
Hamburg has been on alert since the events of September 11 2001, as that was the city where Mohammed Atta and his collaborators planned the attacks, and it’s here that we meet Günter Bachmann (Hoffman with an excellent German accent), the head of a super-secret anti-terrorism team. Bachmann is a patient man and surprisingly sensitive, and he’s often at odds with gung-ho intelligence head Dieter Mohr (nasty Rainer Bock), and they’re currently clashing over Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), a half-Chechen, half-Russian immigrant. A victim of torture and imprisonment in both his native countries, Karpov has approached Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), a young human-rights attorney who’s in the process of helping him claim a huge inheritance. Bachmann believes that there is truth to Issa’s promises that the money is ‘dirty’, and he also hopes to bring some higher-profile suspects out into the open, and so he attempts to formulate an elaborate trap involving Richter and bank boss Tommy Brue (Willem Dafoe), and much of the final third here is the high-stakes sting in operation. And Corbijn struggles to make it as tense and unsettling as it really should be.
There’s much herein that’s impressive, from the authentic accents to the supporting cast (with Robin Wright, Daniel Brühl and others in smaller roles) and Hoffman’s committed, bleary performance, but the one-note miserableness hurts it. And it’s weirdly depressing that some of the final moments feature Philip Seymour Hoffman rather badly overacting!!!
I Wake Up Screening 