A Most Wanted Man Philip Seymour Hoffman, Rachel McAdams, Grigoriy Dobrygin. Directed by Anton Corbijn. Rated R. Opens Friday.

Based on a novel by spy-fiction master John le Carré, A Most Wanted Man bears an unsurprising resemblance to 2011’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, another methodical espionage procedural based on a le Carré novel. Most Wanted isn’t as riveting as Tinker Tailor, and its characters aren’t quite as well-drawn, but it’s still often fascinating, with a climax that effectively generates suspense from such everyday actions as the signing of bank documents.

Also unlike Tinker Tailor, Most Wanted is set in the present day, or fairly close to it. It takes place in Hamburg, Germany, where intelligence operative Günther Bachmann (Philip Seymour Hoffman, in his final starring role) is working diligently to cultivate assets with connections to Islamic terrorist groups. In particular, he’s hoping to use a young Chechen named Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin) as his entry point to a larger terrorist network. While Bachmann favors building strong relationships with potential assets, his superiors (as well as an American envoy played by Robin Wright) prefer swifter, more brutal tactics.

The tension between the carrot and the stick is the movie’s key philosophical concern, but le Carré and director Anton Corbijn (The American) are just as interested in the minutiae of modern-day spy work, including the compromises that get made in nondescript boardrooms. Those details aren’t always compelling enough to compensate for the movie’s slow pace, but they build to a satisfyingly bleak conclusion, aided by Hoffman’s committed, internalized performance. Being a spy may mostly involve mundane meetings and telephone calls, but those simple actions can have huge consequences.