A Most Wanted Man (5/10)
by Tony Medley
Runtime 121 minutes.
OK for children.

Director Anton Corbijn has admirably captured the tenor and flavor of John le Carré’s long, boring, wordy books by translating his 2008 novel into a long, boring, wordy movie. He takes almost two hours to build up to a most unsatisfying denouement, which is consistent with the depressing tenor of most of Carré’s writings. I have to give it to him, though; there’s no way this can be called a Hollywood Ending.

There are a couple of reasons why people might want to spend good money to see this. The first is that it’s the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last film. Unfortunately, it’s not one of his best performances because little is asked of him except to look old, fat, and sloppy. He does, however, do that very well.

The second is to see the beautiful Rachel McAdams cavort in the tightest jeans in the history of blue jeans. I heard that John Travolta’s contract for one of his movies required that he be supplied with 8 tight T-shirts each and every day. I guess that was so that they would always be tight and each was discarded when it showed the slightest sag.

I wouldn’t doubt that this was also in McAdams’ contract because I’ve never seen tighter jeans on a living person. In fact they are so tight it must have taken an entire crew to get them on her body.

There is one laughable anomaly in the film, however. McAdams is trying to hide her Islamic client to spirit him away from the authorities. So she has him shave off his beard so he looks completely different. The two of them then try to slip surreptitiously away. One thing didn’t change, though; McAdams still has her beautiful long blonde hair shaking in the wind and she’s still wearing her tight jeans. Could it not have occurred to them that to get away, both had to be disguised?

If you haven’t determined by now, when half of this review is devoted to McAdams’ Jeans, that there’s nothing much in this movie worth commenting upon, I guess I haven’t done my job.

July 21, 2014