A Most Wanted Man

A Most Wanted Man (2014)

Genres - Mystery, Drama, Spy Film, Thriller  |   Sub-Genres - Paranoid Thriller, Political Thriller, Unglamorized Spy Film  |   Release Date - Jul 25, 2014 (USA - Limited)  |   Run Time - 122 min.  |   Countries - Germany, United Kingdom, United States  |   MPAA Rating - R
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Synopsis by Nathan Southern

The late Philip Seymour Hoffman gives his final screen performance in this taut yet labyrinthine adaptation of John le Carré's 2008 spy novel. In the years immediately following 9/11, Gunter Bachmann (Hoffman) is a counterterrorist expert based in Hamburg who operates as a rogue agent, independently of the Grenzschutzgruppe 9 der Bundespolizei (GSG-9). He specializes in bringing down jihadists, and as the story opens, he begins to fixate on a Chechen immigrant named Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), newly arrived in town. Issa's motivations are initially unknown, but he befriends an American social worker (Rachel McAdams) who grows convinced of his harmlessness and sets about persuading Gunter of the same. Meanwhile, Gunter becomes aware of a palpable and imminent threat to national security that involves future jihad activity, and devises an ingenious plan that he hopes will both extinguish the threat and provide amnesty for Issa. The Americans and the GSG-9, however, learn of Gunter's plot and express both impatience and a general skepticism about the scheme's effectiveness. A Most Wanted Man premiered at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

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Keywords

Germany, war-on-terrorism, Muslim