Best Actress 2013: Rachel McAdams, A Most Wanted Man

Rachel McAdams is one of those actresses who is constantly on the brink of "happening."  After a long hot streak, hiatus, and then stumbling back into the swing of things, 2012 gave her a comeback story with a box-office hit (The Vow) and a Best Picture nominee (Midnight in Paris).  Now, whether or not she'll capitalize on it is yet unforeseen.  She landed an intriguing thriller with Brian DePalma opposite Noomi Rapace, but, unfortunately, the early word from TIFF wasn't that promising.  And should we really have held our breaths with DePalma?  Her role in Terrence Malick's To the Wonder is apparently small.  She has the female lead in Richard Curtis' About Time, which sounds like a comedy-drama version of The Time Traveler's Wife.  Curtis wrote and directed Love Actually and Pirate Radio, and may strike gold at the box-office.  Her baitiest project this year, however, seems to with Scandinavian director Anton Corbijn, who has shown to be quite capable with Control and The American.  He is behind Andrew Bovell's (Edge of Darkness) adaptation of John le Carré's A Most Wanted Man.  The author's novels have been around for a while, but it hasn't been until the last ten years that he has been getting the five-star treatment in cinema with recent film versions of The Constant Gardener and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  Set in Hamburg (and filmed on location, as well as in Berlin), McAdams plays German civil rights lawyer Annabel Richter who takes on the case of a young Chechen illegal immigrant (Grigoriy Dobrygin) whose identity is shrouded in a air of mystery.  The story is inspired by real life events involving a Turk Murat Kurnaz arrested in Pakistan and detained and tortured at multiple internment facilities.  The cast includes Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Wright, and Willem Dafoe.  Crew includes cinematographer Benoit Delhomme (The Proposition), and editor Claire Simpson (Platoon, Wall Street, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Nine, The Reader, The Constant Gardener).

I've been waiting for this girl to find the right role and get nominated for years.  I can see it happening.  I can also see her messing up the accent, so who knows.  McAdams excels in contemporary roles, and has attempted less modern fare in Sherlock Holmes (which, whether because of her performance and/or the film, left much to be desired) and Married Life (which failed to impress many).  Amy Adams, Carey Mulligan, and Jessica Chastain were all considered for her part.  No US distributor or release date is set for the film.

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