His character is point man of a super-secret anti-terror team in Hamburg formed in the wake of 9/11 foul-ups, and his life is neatly summarized in a scene at a local bar wherein he and Martha Sullivan (Robin Wright), an American agent with the CIA, discuss the finer points of a joint target. Midway through this powwow, the camera, which had been contemplating them along the wall in the relative private of an alcove, switches to the table’s opposite side and we see them conversing while typical bar goings-on unfold in the background. A couple dances. A man is passed out at a table. Drinks are served. The fate of the world is being decided even as the rest of the world obliviously keeps on trucking. These people have a chance to peek behind the curtain and don’t even realize it. And, of course, it’s better that way, because once you wind up behind the curtain, you wind up like Gunther – awe-inspiringly dour, burning the candle at both ends, freshening up every cup of black coffee with booze. There is another shot in the film when you catch sight of the character’s rumpled "bacon neck" undershirt. He is entombed in dishevelment.
Directed by Anton Corbijn so as to accentuate the negative, “A Most Wanted Man” is inflicted with the grim stench of bureaucracy. Despite specifically being enlisted to do a very specific thing, Gunther is routinely handcuffed and out-maneuvered by those around him as he tries to do it. He prefers a wait-and-see approach, his superior (Rainer Bock) prefers a right-now, questions-later method. Meanwhile, Martha keeps appearing like a Central Intelligence apparition. She wants to help, or she says she does, but he doesn’t trust her, and this is understandable. Her smile is the embodiment of an animal trap, as if the upper lip denotes friendliness while the bottom lip waits with the shiv. It’s a smile seven steps ahead of everyone. It’s a character unto itself.
The story seems to turn on a half-Russian, half-Chechen immigrant, Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), desperately seeking asylum in Germany to escape torturous reprisals in his native countries. But that’s not how Gunther sees him. He sees a jihadist in the cloak of an immigrant, an evildoer with potential access to an inheritance that could fund an act of terror. And when Issa turns to a lawyer (Rachel McAdams) for help in accessing his money, Gunther and his team swoop in to enlist the lawyer and the banker (Willem Dafoe) in aiding the cause.
This is not, however, a standard procedural in which the characters follow clues and negotiate twists to achieve a recitation of that age-old phrase "Case solved", but nor is it a procedural specifically about the process of investigation regardless of result, like David Fincher's "Zodiac." Its ultimate twist is built to slowly and subtly and then is dropped on us all at once, and it pertains less to the outcome of the investigation than how the investigation's outcome simply serves as reinforcement of Gunther's outlook on and place in the world. “A Most Wanted Man” is an incredibly grim but no less gripping character study of a protagonist bound by red tape whose bedrock is tied not so much to faith as to futility, and the closing sequence is an effectively crushing reminder that the world is always one step ahead.
To try and remove all your pre-conceived emotional entanglements from the haunting wrap-up of “A Most Wanted Man” because “it's just a movie” is as futile as the film's overall outlook. It becomes a mind-numbing memorial and when
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