A Most Wanted Man (Anton Corbijn, 2014)

Philip Seymour Hoffman, in his last leading role before his untimely death, still fills the screen despite his obvious physical decline - he barely gets above a mumbling shuffle for most of the film - and a somewhat slender script, not one of John le Carré's most focused works, taking swipes at American overseas interventionism rather too indirectly to have much bite.
You can expect the veteran rock video specialist Corbijn to produce a stylish-looking work, and so Hamburg gets its turn to look inhospitable and threatening in a retrogressive Cold War fashion. As for the slow-paced story itself, which involves Hoffman's German counter-espionage agent Bachmann trying to connect a pillar of the Muslim community with financing terrorism, it is at least plausible, though hardly fresh with both his superiors and the CIA tying his hands behind his back at every turn.
So, it doesn't offend the eye nor insult the intelligence with the cartoon action that is now the spy film default, but it does still fall back on three Americans playing Germans as its leads, despite the attendance of the estimable Nina Hoss and Daniel Brühl in the background, which somewhat undermines any anti-U.S. imperialist point that it could and should have had the courage to make. Without that ire or any sense of narrative urgency, the end result is somewhat dull.

5/10