Midweek Mention... A Most Wanted Man

A Most Wanted Man

Cris: Do you reckon Dan had sex with a yak while he was there in Nepal?

Reegs: Yes. I

Sidey: there's any other way to survive.

This one probably wants to go back so

Reegs: it

Cris: I think he's banging on about it so

Sidey: anyway. A most wanted yak. A Most Wanted Man. Yes,

Cris: Yes. Most

Reegs: man.

Sidey: Yeah, this is a Like an espionage thriller type movie. Yes.

Reegs: We can get some notes from him later on, because he's we'll get into this

Sidey: I'm pretty sure he watched it. I think he might have got around to watching it. We can get some notes from him later on, because he's we'll get into this later, but he's currently

Reegs: the

Sidey: Jersey's Buckingham Palace equivalent.

More on that later in the week. But yes, this is, it's also a Philip Seymour Hoffman joint.

Reegs: The last of his to be finished and premiered

Sidey: He died a week after the premier at Sundance, didn't he? Yeah. Sad times.

Reegs: like he's dying the whole way

Cris: In the movie, yeah, he, he doesn't look well, bless him.

Reegs: And it's got a pretty big cast. Rachel McAdams, that we saw in About Time, I quite like her. Willem Dafoe, Robin Wright, that we've seen a lot recently for some

reason.

Sidey: the pantheon of bad movie haircuts. This one is right up there, I think. It's not good. It's not a good look on her.

Reegs: up there.

It's not good, it's not a good look on her. Um, So, you know, stats. The vibe is

Sidey: did enjoy that. Yeah. So, you know, stacked.

The vibe is good going into this, with all that knowledge, I thought. And it starts with, if I can remember rightly, a dude

Reegs: the,

Sidey: Yes, that's it, 9 11 spiel.

Reegs: talks about Muhammad Atta conceiving and planning the September 11th

Sidey: In Hamburg.

Reegs: Hanover.

Sidey: Hanover, sorry.

Reegs: And there was like intergovernmental rivalries and failures that happened that he like was, he went about his plans without really being discovered or what he was, he wasn't really stopped because of all these failures. So German security services remained high on alert because it all happened under their watch.

And they vowed to never let it happen again, and so Hanover stays on a sort of city of high alert at all times.

Sidey: Yeah. And then we see this dude I think through CCTV and and then in the flesh he's got a black eye and he's wearing a hoodie, so he is clearly almost certainly a terrorist.

Reegs: Yeah, and he arrives up in through a boat and into the docks.

Yeah.

Cris: just kind of gets on and sleeps in the car

Reegs: And he's trying, you know, he's clearly breaking into the country,

Sidey: It's an illegal immigrant.

Reegs: Yeah, and we'll come to know it will be revealed that this is the guy who's going to drive the plot. Issa Karpov is his name. He's a Chechen refugee.

And we'll cut after the seeing him to Philip Seymour Hoffman. I think it's like 20 past two in the morning.

He's working. It's Gunther Backman. He heads a sort of small organization that's tasked with recruiting kind of informers inside the

Cris: And he's, he loves Siggy's.

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: Yeah, he does. Yeah, he's not looking like he takes good care of himself. He drinks a lot, he smokes a lot. But his M. O. is, right, find someone that's in play.

Yeah. And then you leverage them to get to the next guy, to the next guy, to the next guy. They're not interested in small bus. That's like, that's

Reegs: And there's plenty of fishing metaphors they talk about, you know, to catch a barracuda and all this kind of thing.

Sidey: Yeah, catching the guy at the bottom of the rung is not going to stop any kind of terrorist plot. So we need to get

Cris: higher up the chain.

Is this now when they show the Muslim leader guy? Nowadays, there's an interview of him or something like that, they kind of just show him at, is that?

Reegs: Yes. Yeah. I can't remember what is the guy's name? Dr. Abdullah. Yes. He's like a philanthropist, a kind of Muslim charity worker, but it's clear the team have got their eye on him.

Sidey: They suspect him of siphoning some of his funds off to fund Al Qaeda operations. Yes. But they cannot prove it at the moment.

Reegs: Yeah. Well, they have, they have an informant who we're not going to know about. We'll see like, drop offs and information exchanged and all that sort of stuff. And pretty soon, you know, his work and this, this noise about Karpov, the Chechen refugee who's been tortured by Russian governmental and he might be, you know, here for money.

So it gets around, there's all these other agencies that become involved, another local agency that want to do it differently, applying pressure. There's an American diplomat that's,

Sidey: Well, there's a meeting, isn't there? And it's very clear that they're just about the stats. Like, we need some arrest. We got to get this guy.

Oh, you know that he's done something fine. Let's get him. And Philips him off was like, goodness, like, no, no, that's really ineffectual. And so they're having this battle. And they give him I think 76 hours or something to say to him, right, you've got X amount of time, deliver something, otherwise we're going in and we're doing our thing.

And that's, you know, that's the battle right there. And then, then, yeah, Robin Wright, her character, she comes in and says, no, I think he knows what he's doing. But then we learn he has history of stuff going bad.

Reegs: Yeah where was it, in Beirut, was it? Some operation that he was in charge of, you know, went catastrophically wrong.

Sidey: were killed. He's got that on his conscience. But he's still a true believer in his methods. He's still like, no, this is what we have to do.

Reegs: his methods are pretty stereotypical spy shit, smoking a lot of ciggies, staring at a board that's got lots of strings on it. And

Sidey: you know, lot of monitors and surveillance getting informants.

Reegs: think what does make it interesting is 'cause he meets like a series of people through it who drive the plot. And like you say, each one, he uses some kind of leverage. Sometimes it's on moral grounds, he'll get to them. Yeah.

Cris: Well, Rachel McAdams kind of comes into play and she's gets into this into Issa,

Reegs: Yeah.

Cris: the, this Turkish family, the ghost who he saw is living at, they go to her because she's a human rights lawyer or something like that.

And they're like, look, you need to speak to this guy. He's here. We, you need to help him

Reegs: He's been tortured, he's a political refugee, and she's like, well, what's the evidence?

And he just takes his shirt off and he's just got, like, the most horrible welts and scars

Cris: And then he, all he has is a name. He doesn't really know much about Germany or, but he has a name. Yeah. Willem Dafoe's name. And then Gunther kind of starts following the lead of from her to him. And then they realized that

Reegs: Yeah.

Sidey: She's at a set of traffic lights and a woman next to her taps her on the shoulder and she looks round and goes, Oh, hello. And then I think it's Daniel Brawl just comes over and sticks the sack over her head and they bundle her into a van and you're like, Fucking hell, these are the,

Reegs: Yeah. Good

guys.

Sidey: commas, good guys.

Cris: guys. And

Sidey: they just keep her under lock and key until she's kind of got no choice but to help them.

Reegs: almost sort of Stockholm syndrome into like going with

them. Yeah. At The

Cris: name was Ado

Sidey: point. That's why they keep her though. We need him. What they've been able to do is piece together by speaking to Willem Dafoe that There's a letter from Issa's old man

Reegs: who was a terrorist,

Sidey: terrorist to

will him, to bruise, to bruise old man as the financier

who had done him a favour and that favour was money laundering.

Reegs: this bit was a little bit like in the Simpsons, you know, the hell right.

What are they called? Apes?

Sidey: The hell fish, Hellcats the hell fish.

Reegs: Yeah. How flying hellfish or whatever they're called where they have the like the last surviving person

Sidey: got the letter, inherit the money. Yeah. And

Reegs: got to present the letter.

Sidey: So there's, there's 10 million euros that has just been held in a, is it in a safety deposit box or just any in a, in a, you know, numbered account.

Yeah. Effectively. And they suspect that Issa has come to. Retrieve the money. Yeah, because that the evidence does kind of point

Reegs: evidence does tell you.

Where's he actually from? He's from

No,

Sidey: he where's he actually from he's from

Reegs: He

Sidey: No, he's from somewhere else. He's no I identify as Chechen Muslim. I the money is dirty. I don't want it He's just here to I did just seeking asylum.

Cris: Well, he wants to get away from the Russians that tortured him,

Reegs: Exactly.

Sidey: But they now know that there's a connection and they're going to introduce him to The philanthropist dude.

Reegs: Yeah. Via Tommy. Yeah. So Tommy has to be turned first. Gunther sets something up with him. Yeah. A couple of times. They do a thing in this where they like commandeer cars or pull people over or get it. They get in a car, they don't realize he's the taxi driver or whatever. And I think they do it to Tommy, don't they?

Yeah. It's the

Sidey: Conceit isn't it with yeah he's the taxi driver yeah

Reegs: And

Sidey: they want to see if he if he can get the money

Reegs: so

they can get to Abdullah.

Sidey: give it to Abdullah or donate it to Abdullah and see what he does with it

Reegs: So they've got, right. Yeah, because Abdullah, they, they know about this list of like a hundred charities that they'll pre-approve and all that stuff.

And they've got this one fishing not fishing. It's like shipping

Sidey: company, yeah. Which is the front.

Reegs: Yeah and they've learned about like, whatever it is, a thousand tons of goods going there and then 900 tons coming off. So somewhere along the line, shit's disappearing. So they suspect, but they have no evidence really. They want to give this blood money from Issa Karpov to this guy and see what he does with it so they can catch him in the act.

Sidey: Yeah, and there's various bits of surveillance. If you're a fan of a man throwing a paper airplane at a thin plastic sheet for quite a while then this is up your alley

Cris: is it. Yeah, exactly.

Sidey: just watch him doing that and he's clearly, you know He doesn't seem to be motivated by you know, terrorism or whatever.

But they they do set that up and I quite like all this all the surveillance stuff. I've read a few like You know

Memoirs of spies and all the dead drops and all that stuff. It's really cool. But they do set it up and he takes the bait and he goes to see William Defoe's guy to do the signing and that's where they're again, they're back watching the monitor ready to go.

And he's at first, he's like, okay, charity, charity, charity, charity and at the last second, he says, Actually, I don't want to change this last one. And they all smile as they're watching and go, I've got this company where I want to do blah. And they're like, fucking bingo, we've got him.

Reegs: They've got him. But they still know that really, Gunther's still got his eye on the next guy, really. Because he knows this guy's the financier to the top guy, but he still wants someone else. But now he's got him.

Sidey: Yes, that's, that's the conflict, isn't it? They just want him. He wants to Get further up the food chain.

Reegs: Because they're listening. It's good. It's a great quote because he gives him a pen, doesn't he? Tommy Brawl.

Sidey: It can

Reegs: is this? It writes like a pen. It looks like a pen. It listens like a pen.

Sidey: Yeah. And as he's doing the change up, they're all like, Great, right, he's gonna need a car. So we'll make, we'll intercept that call. Or we'll stop the

Cris: No, the son, the son

Reegs: The sun. The sun

Cris: oh I'm stopped in traffic because the son was the informant.

Reegs: and the sun was the informant. Exactly. We saw this right at the beginning when he's given, he's left a packet of cigarettes in the

Sidey: that's right. Yeah. He's

Reegs: got a little UV USB thing that kicks the whole plot in motion.

It was his son Dr. Abdullah's

Sidey: son.

Yeah. And instead they're like, oh, why don't you, why don't you call a cab? And this is Gunther is going to be the like fancy dress cab driver, but as he's in the cab and ready to intercept, it all goes.

Completely fucking Pete Tong as the the rival guys. Agencies just like, no, we're fucking

Reegs: It's the Americans, isn't it? At the end of the day, fucked him. Who would have, who would have thought?

Sidey: Bundle up in big black vans, take everyone.

Reegs: They take Issa Karpov, who's supposed to be a free man, Abdullah, they take the do they take the

Cris: No, just Abdullah and and Karpov. And also,

Reegs: And this happens like literally in the last four or five minutes of the

Cris: And, and two minutes before he just, they just managed to give him papers and asylum and everything. And now it's

Reegs: the best he could do, he gave him the best he could, like.

Sidey: in Guantanamo

Reegs: And we haven't really talked about it because it doesn't, it does come out of nowhere, this bit, but also there has been ratcheting up the tension of the rival agencies, the political pressure from the Americans and all that stuff, Then it happens and I was fucking fuming.

Sidey: I didn't see it coming so I was like, are you fucking twats? Like, you're so short sighted. What are you doing?

Reegs: know what you're doing.

Cris: because it's the end of the movie.

Sidey: Yeah, this just

Cris: There's no more for him to fight or to do anything. He just see him just dejected. He's just like completely, he doesn't even want to speak to anyone.

Just gets into his fake taxi

Sidey: Have a ciggy.

Cris: has a ciggy. Yeah.

Sidey: ciggy.

Cris: And he just goes and that's the end of the movie. There's

Sidey: that's it. That's the espionage game, I guess.

Cris: So, yeah, I like this movie. Well, I like the the fact that it was in Germany, first of all. And I, I've been to Hamburg before and it's quite nice. And it does remind me of the whole Germany really, it reminds me a bit of home, especially Berlin and Dresden, not so much Hamburg because we don't have such a big city at the, kind of like the river and, and going out, but I, I do like the, it reminds me of home, the architecture and the gray and the

Reegs: It's a, well, it's, yeah, the brutalism, I mean, I know it's like obviously a thing that people talk about at the moment, but it was, this movie has got it all the time, like, and it's shot really interestingly from that perspective.

But it's only a semi recommend from me because.

There were a number of cliches that did my fucking head in. Hoffman's character, I think, was just ridiculous, like, you know, Chainsmoke. You've seen it a thousand times. There's even a bit where he has to pretend kiss,

Sidey: Rachel?

Reegs: Yeah no, yeah, Rachel McAdams, isn't it?

Pretend kisses her, like, oh, just so many cliches and stuff. And then the ending really pissed me off.

Sidey: It's meant to, though, I think, that it's effective. I, yeah, I mean Philip Seymour from Asia is great. So I didn't, he didn't piss me off. It, to me, it was just like quite slow paced, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but

Reegs: But it was interesting to see the way he worked his way up the chain

Sidey: Yeah. No, I enjoyed it on the whole. It's it's a medium. Well, recommend for me. Definitely worth your time. I like spice stuff. It's cool. And you see like today, the Russians have

Like bombed, out two of our

Reegs: Yeah, retaliation for the Bulgarians.

Sidey: one of those off. So this shit's happening all the time.

Reegs: Yeah, I saw this a couple of weeks ago, so I felt the same as you when I was watching it. It was a bit slow and some of the directions a little bit workmanlike, but I have been thinking afterwards just more about how interesting the plot was and how, you know, it does humanize everybody who's involved in this

Sidey: Yeah. Everyone's just kind of, there's no, I mean, there are clear good guys.

Reegs: No, it's really grey and

Sidey: but it's like everyone's just doing their thing, trying to get their thing done. Yeah. You know? And it's just from everyone's sort of point of view. And like the guys that just want the arrest, you kind of like, yeah. Do need to get some people off.

I mean, if you take the finance out, then that's quite a big step.

So it's not completely outrageous, but it's just, work together

Reegs: guys, you know.

Bit

Sidey: Bit light on lols as well, I would say.

Reegs: I would say. I do

Cris: on lols as well I would say. No lols at all. I think

Reegs: I think it's just more, I felt, I found his character a little bit of a cliche. He was good because it was Philip Seymour Hoffman. You like him and he wheezes and you listen to him wheezing the whole way through the

Sidey: At one point he just gets up and punches someone that's having a fight in the

Cris: the background.

Oh yeah,

yeah. Are you trying impress me? No.

Sidey: So a strong A semi and a medium well recommend on that one. Yeah, it's overall positive. I would

Reegs: Oh, yeah, definitely.