Film Review: MOST WANTED (2020): Antoine Olivier Pilon and Josh Hartnett Lead a Sturdy, Investigative Political Thriller

Most Wanted Review

Most Wanted (2020) Film Review, a movie directed by Daniel Roby, and starring Antoine Olivier Pilon, Josh Hartnett, Stephen McHattie, Jim Gaffigan, Cory Lipman, Don McKellar, Rose-Marie Perreault, Amanda Crew, Nadia Verrucci, Mark Camacho, Raphael Grosz-Harvey, Robert Crooks, Frank Schorpion, J.C. MacKenzie, and Harry Standjofski.

If the past few months have made it plainly evident, cops are not here to protect you. They serve the interest of property, capital, and the state at-large – the latter of which mostly works for the benefit of the first two. The police will fight tooth and nail to enforce their power and to hold onto it in the first place, with no regard for who gets caught up in their web of corruption. Violence and deception collectively oil the gears of empire, keeping it trudging along into the future.

These truths aren’t new. In fact, as evidenced in Daniel Roby’s new political thriller Most Wanted, they’ve been happening for a long, long time. So while the essence of the film shouldn’t be particularly revelatory, it still serves as a welcome reminder.

Juxtaposed through near-parallel arcs, Most Wanted follows twentysomething heroin junkie Daniel Léger (Antoine Olivier Pilon) and Canadian investigative journalist Victor Malarek (Josh Hartnett) and their fateful meet-up in a Bangkok prison in the late 1980s.

Léger, a day-laborer and small-time drug user recently back in Canada from Thailand, stumbles into the path of local drug dealer Glen Picker (a crudely manic Jim Gaffigan) when looking to score – both some smack, as well as a job. Picker misinterprets Léger’s experiences in Thailand for experience with large-scale drug dealing, and – seeing it as a way to garner amnesty for his own illegal actions – constructs an elaborate sting with the Canadian Narcotics Police, roping Léger in under the guise of establishing a heroin pipeline from Bangkok. Dubbed Operation Goliath, the project begins to crumble when conflicting info continuously punctures holes in the state’s case. But the lead detective (Stephen McHattie), desperate for funding and a shot at the limelight, is too desperate to call it off. The ordeal ends in a bloody mess, with Léger being thrown into a Thai prison for a life sentence as the cops getting off scot-free.

Enter: Malarek, the gung-ho investigative reporter for the Toronto Globe & Mail. He’s pushy, unintimidated, and has a self-proclaimed talent for sniffing out “bullshit” – and also outrunning the henchmen of local mob bosses he exposes in his articles. Malarek catches wind of the botched Operation Goliath and starts digging around in state police records, confident that the feds are hiding something pertaining to Léger. (Although, until we see Malarek interview him in person, he never actually mentions Léger’s name.) Much to the reluctant chagrin of his editor (J.C. MacKenzie), a shifty federal officer (Frank Schorpion), and the Canadian Narcotics Police on the whole, Malarek keeps up his investigation to clear Leger’s name – even though it keeps exposing him and his wife (Amanda Crew) to extrajudicial retribution.

Roby’s presentation of the split narrative works simultaneously as a puzzling game and a compartmentalizing tactic. If the film were to be presented in a strictly linear fashion, it would’ve been too episodic and thematically unfocused to have any effect. By keeping them split before dioptrically merging them at the final act, Roby gives credence to multiple characters and themes without making the whole work feel bloated. What’s more, it helps to parallel Léger and Malarek’s separate journeys by showing the similar looming threat that the police play in each of their lives.

The split narrative also adds a bit of mystery to the whole affair. We have a pretty good idea how things will end, but we don’t know exactly what will happen to bring us to that conclusion – mainly, the number of times the police miscalculate their advantage and make egregious mistakes, throwing even our most cynical assumptions of their incompetence out of whack. Roby highlights the sheer ludicrousness of the Narcotics Police and their brazen lack of ethics, forcing us to consider what purpose they really provide in maintaining our societal safety.

Although Roby’s clever construction doesn’t alleviate the film’s own sense of aggrandizement, as delineated via near-clichéd line deliveries and disorienting Bourne-like cinematography. All of this adds a glaze of importance to the story’s skeleton of political conspiracy, rather than build muscle off the paranoid 1970s essence from which this film could easily emulate. It’s reminiscent of Michael Cuesta’s 2014 investigative thriller Kill the Messenger, both in tone and late-‘80s/early-‘90s fashion trends.

Despite the bland dialogue they’re given, it’s refreshing to see Hartnett and Gaffigan playing against type. Hartnett further expands out past his former teen heartthrob status with snarky panache, and Gaffigan puts his comedic chops on hold to flex a surprisingly apt penchant for despicableness. Pilon delivers a terrifically moody performance, perfectly embodying Léger’s young-adult cockiness and fearful naïveté.

The result is an entertaining work of historical fiction – damning though not scathing, competent though not revelatory. Don’t do smack, don’t trust cops, and…don’t wear washed-out jeans with a blazer and tie.

Rating: 6/10

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