This is [John] le Carré’s world of competing agencies within the same country who prize power over efficiency and interests outside the structure working their own interests.... It’s superb.

| Feb 8, 2025

It’s compelling stuff – crisp and razor sharp.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 19, 2022

The story reveals an overarching theme about the current, pointedly American, post-9/11 approach to spy games, and the more intricate, more persistent, perhaps specifically European alternative.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 5, 2022

A Most Wanted Man is about as drab as it is inessential.

| Jun 4, 2021

There's able support from Willem Dafoe as a banker holding the keys to Issa's fate as the third act tension ramps towards a climax Hoffman owns.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | May 26, 2021

A Most Wanted Man ... is an intellectually incoherent film, out of sync with a reality in which intelligence agencies are a barbaric expression of the emerging authoritarian state.

| Feb 26, 2021

Features a measured but intense performance from Hoffman, but the film itself isn't as interesting as he is.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 1, 2021

The 2-star reviews floating around are genuinely baffling. This is a film that requires and rewards a little patience, with a superb swansong from Hoffman and an excellent McAdams matching Corbijn's strong direction.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 25, 2019

A Most Wanted Man is an efficient espionage drama that, whilst in no way revelatory, is attuned to its source material's non-heroic and morally ambiguous approach to a well-worn genre.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 3, 2019

For audiences who are patient with meticulously paced narratives, the spy story is an intelligent, mature and riveting piece of filmmaking anchored with subtly by actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, an amazing talent lost far too soon.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 31, 2018

Corbijn has assembled a fine cast of performers, yet still comes up with a disjointed jigsaw puzzle. Playing unfocused spy games in A Most Wanted Man leaves this peek-a-boo thriller feeling tired and unwanted.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Dec 14, 2018

The last minute of this film will break your heart. Good-bye, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

| Sep 24, 2018

So stylish that no one seems able to bring themselves to say exactly what's happening.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 19, 2018

How many times does one come across an intelligent and effective adaptation? [Full review in Spanish]

| Jan 18, 2018

[There's] a brilliant and unnervingly timely exchange.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 18, 2017

It drags on a little long, but you can't look away.

| Jul 26, 2016

A Most Wanted Man is a rare feature: a relatively smart take on the war on terror that doesn't devolve into ideological score settling.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jul 14, 2016

As their entire mission rests on the most minuscule of actions, Corbijn has crafted a smart, slow-burn thriller.

| Original Score: B | Jun 21, 2016

In a spy flick, we want to see action. We want to see Jason Bourne jumping off a roof. We want tension, not realism-not smoking and meetings and yakking.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 14, 2016

A bittersweet curtain call for the late Philip Seymour Hoffman.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Apr 15, 2016