Fifty Years: Fifty Movies – part five

In one days, I will turn fifty.  Or maybe you could say, I will achieve fifty years old, finishing my 50th year.  To celebrate (at least, on this blog), we’re taking a look back and picking a film from each year of my life that I think is notable. My birthday is June 7, so each film came out in the year that began on that date, according to Wikipedia.

 

A Most Wanted Man

A Most Wanted Man is apparently the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final film performance (although the next Hunger Games movies is still on its way), and certainly in it he doesn’t look at all well.  I have no idea how much of that is acting and how much (if any) is actually failing health, but from a film performance point of view it doesn’t matter, because Hoffman does a solid and praiseworthy job playing Günther Bachmann, the head of a small group of investigators operating out of Hamburg, where the 9-11 attacks were apparently planned, charged with the task of making sure that such a thing never happens again in that city.  When they become aware of the illegal arrival of a suspicious Chechen with a violent past, they see an opportunity to take down a respectable Muslim statesman who is secretly laundering money to terrorist organizations.