Adapted from John Le Carre’s (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy) novel by Anton Corbijn (Control,The American) this gripping post-9/11 contemporary espionage thriller delivers in spades.
The late Philip Seymour Hoffman is riveting as a cynical German intelligence officer on the trail of a suspected Chechen terrorist in another of Le Carre’s pleasurably cerebral incursions into the moral soup of contemporary espionage.
The film is most effective in exposing the territorial power-plays by competing national and international intelligence agencies within Germany who seem more concerned with their political ambitions than the job of keeping their citizens safe from terrorist threats.
Throw in a conflicted banker played with typical assurance by Willem Dafoe, an understated attraction between the terrorist and his left-wing lawyer (Rachel McAdams), and an intricate plot which constantly shifts under both the audiences’ and characters’ feet and we have a grown up thriller which is both entertaining and thought provoking.
It’s perhaps most closely aligned in tone to the recent spate of sophisticated Scandinavian television such as The Killing but told with real cinematic verve by former photographer, promo-maker and now A-list director Anton Corbijn.