A Most Wanted Man

John Le Carre novels have never been something that I have enjoyed reading. I tried Tinker, Tailor but found it the same as this - plodding and wordy, dialogue heavy and with little action.
It starts promisingly, with a Muslim immigrant turning up in Hamburg and claiming an inheritance from a private British bank, that was accrued by his father through nefarious means. The plot follows lawyer for the displaced and regugees, Annabel Richter, and banker Tommy Brue as they are reluctantly used by British and German politicos as pawns in a larger chess game to catch a jihadist funder of terror operations.


If it wasn't for this blog, I don't think I would have persevered with the book, as it was dull and added very little in the way of revelations to the war on terror.





Official movie website

Whereas the book focusses on the civilian and Muslim immigrant interplay, the film takes the more standard thriller scenario by concentrating on the German organisation tasked with stopping Muslim extremists setting up base in Hamburg. The book concentrates on Tommy Brue but his character is relegated to a minor but crucial part. Philip Seymour Hoffman, as government official Gunther Bachman, has the larger screen time and is a natural with real presence.
I don't understand why, however, we are presented with nearly all American actors playing Germans speaking to each other in english. It is noticeable and I found it jarring with all their pronounced accents. When the genuine Germanactors speak english, it is with much less of a trace of a Teutonic twang.  
The film was more appealing than the book but still quite a slow paced piece of political chess playing which inevitably ends with the Americans coming in and knocking over all the pieces.