Kyle Smith

Kyle Smith

Movies

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s last serious film is a thin spy drama

More than 100 minutes into “A Most Wanted Man,” a CIA officer asks, “What are we trying to achieve here?” Viewers can be forgiven for replying, “If you don’t know, why should we?”

This atmospheric, cool-looking but gimpy thriller based on a John le Carré novel makes “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” look like “22 Jump Street.”

A disappointingly inert Philip Seymour Hoffman (in his final serious film) plays a German spy who is hoping to use the title character (a Muslim illegal immigrant in Hamburg, Germany, where the 9/11 attacks were plotted) as bait that’ll lead him to terrorist chieftains.

A dodgy banker (Willem Dafoe), a human rights lawyer (Rachel McAdams) and a CIA officer (Robin Wright) all join in what should play like a maximum-stakes chess match but comes across more like watching water evaporate.

The film is admirably sober and painstaking, and in the early going it promises to at least make a statement.

But director Anton Corbijn (“Control,” “The American”), a photographer who is more interested in colored light filters than in the progression of his story, fails to inject a geopolitical thrill or sexual spark.

McAdams’ scenes with the immigrant (Grigoriy Dobrygin), for instance, keep promising to turn intimate, but never do, and when the banker is accused of being in her thrall, the remark is strangely at odds with the damp lack of passion manifested onscreen.

Half the time the characters come across as absurd (if you wanted to persuade someone to work for you, would you really kidnap and imprison that person?) or trite (cue Hoffman pouring the contents of his flask into his coffee cup).

The rest of the time they seem to be waiting around for something to happen.