The American

With a title like that and a poster like this one would expect a  traditionnal yet entertaining piece of action flick full of testoterone  and fueled with explosions and car chases. Well, one shouldn't be more  surprised! Yes it is a story about guns but not what you would have  expected.

George Clooney, or the Cary Grant of his generation,  portrays a lonely American gun handcrafter chased by Swedes. Hiding in  Italy, he's asked to craft a gun with specific demands. He slowly  discovers the reason why the gun has been made and he starts to fear and  paranoid on everyone he meets and gets involved with.

The rythm  of the film is very slow and it could make you think of a Jim Jarmusch  film. There's not much dialogues but everything is in the frame and told  in images. Corbijn plays with the Hitchcock grammar with close shots  and many inserts. Many scenes are filled with mute tension between the  characters and the action is depicted as Corbijn wants.

It's a  film that may not concern many film viewers because, like the old man  Hitchcock used to say, the chase must be better than the catch, and yes  it is. But the chase is dedicated to those who like long instalments and  subtle cinema. Well, it's not the main preoccupation of the moviegoers  of today... They ask for fast food and /</gispan style="font-style: italic;"/>/giFast and the Furious</span>, instead of good old simmer food and <span style="font-style: italic;">North by Northwest</span>. It's a very good film that is not the best of the year but a strong effort that I hope won't be forgotten by the cinephiles...

George Clooney has played many different roles over the years, from O Brother, Where Art Thou?'s crazed Ulysses Everett McGill to ER's super-sincere Dr. Doug Ross - but few have been as intense or as challenging as Jack, the sullen antihero of The American.

In many ways The American is a very old-fashioned movie, harking back to the days of Steve McQueen and Paul Newman,  when life was cheap, men were tough, and women dressed exclusively  in miniskirts. The old-school vibe stretches through the production,  from the carefully-paced script to the cars they drive, and you can  almost imagine this is a lost movie reel from the Seventies. In a decade  that's been dominated by 3D wonders and CGI demolition derbies, that's  high praise indeed.

That sense of Seventies homage includes the screenplay too, a deliberate  and slow-paced affair that places its emphasis firmly on atmosphere and  character rather than fast-paced action or explosive effects. When the  action does kick off it's often brief and ultra-gritty, as if we've  stepped into the manic free-for-all of a real life fight rather than the  sanitized Hollywood version.

Watching The American is like watching a nature documentary -  long periods of waiting, interspersed with moments of frenetically  violent action. Clooney's Jack is the movie's natural predator.

We learn everything that we need to know about Jack in the pre-credits  sequence, as he faces off against a faceless assassin in the snowy  wastes of Sweden, then executes his own girlfriend in order to cover his  tracks. This is a man for whom survival is everything, and every life  has a price. He may not be very likable, but in his steely determination  there's something indisputably engrossing and timeless.

Jack travels to Italy to hide out in a small mountain village, but it  doesn't take too long for trouble to find him again. In the meantime, he  mopes around town pretending to be a photographer, befriends the local  priest, and falls in love with a prostitute. We warned you that Jack was  a true man's man - and at times he turns the testosterone up to eleven.

While he's hiding out Jack is employed to craft a custom weapon for fellow assassin Mathilde (In Bruges star Thekla Reuten), and it's this that he pours all his time and  energy into. As things start to unravel, however, it may also prove to  be his undoing.

Director Anton Corbijn infuses every frame of The American with a timeless beauty, whether it be the rolling hills of the Italian  countryside or Clooney assembling a homemade silencer, and even without  the dialogue this is a film that would hold our attention with its  stunning visuals. It's just as well, because there are long periods when  no one speaks, and even when Jack does open his mouth it's rarely  illuminating. Like any true man's man, he says more with his actions  than with his words.

The end result is a slow-paced but curiously powerful movie, one that  depicts solitude and silence with both grace and a sense of impending  violence. Jack may not be cinema's coolest hitman, but he's undoubtedly  one of its most intriguing.

As for the minimal plot, it takes some rather obvious twists in the  second half of the film, and the ending becomes so inevitable that it  can't help bordering on cliche. Where the plot doesn't deliver, however,  Corbijn's moody atmospherics and Clooney's stoic heroism do, and The American offers us a uniquely gritty look at the often-glamorized world of the  international assassin. Just don't expect Clooney to be his  usual sparkle-eyed heartthrob - here there be monsters.

4/5

The American opened on September 1st. I had intended to see the first show in the morning but I had to stick around for a UPS delivery, so I had to wait to see it until today, the 2nd.

Directed by Anton Corbijn and starring George Clooney, The American is another of those laconic and iconic male characters- you know - the strong and silent type. While Corbijn's style is a bit unique, the story of an assassin on his last job isn't.

Corbijn takes his time getting into the story despite the lengthy pre-opening credits sequence of a shootout in Sweden that Jack survives. That's no spoiler because - guess what: you know that star wasn't going to die in the first 10 minutes. Anyway, Corbijn's style is to present scenes in a semi-detached manner, or without much in the way of exposition. He trusts you the viewer to be able to grow with the story and piece those seemingly stand alone scenes together.

Clooney as Jack, or Edward, or Mr. Butterfly, gives away nothing. He doesn't answer questions directly or at all. It's not so much that he is a brooding guy tormented by something from his past - in fact we never learn anything about his past.

We know that Jack is an assasin and he wants out of the game. He wants out on his own terms, and at a time of his choosing. Arriving in Rome, Italy, aflter fleeing Sweden, Jack meets his handler and is given a car and a safe house location to hide out in. After Jack tosses away the cell phone he's been given, and has chosen another place to seclude himself in - a different hill town out in the Italian country, he is all about just passing the time.

He meets a local priest, Fr. Benedetto played wonderfully by Paolo Bonacelli. Jack also takes up with a prostitute called Clara played by Violante Placido (a very unique stage or character's name - not quite up there with Pussy Galore - but still memorable in an oxy-moronic way).

Jack is talked into taking one last job. As we heard in the trailers, he doesn't even have to pull the trigger. Instead he is hired to build from scratch a specialized rifle for a client who turns out to be the now-she's-blonde, now-she's-not blonde Mathilde. Thekla Reuten has that role.

The film's poster makes you think that this is going to be a taut action thriller. It is anything but. The shoot outs are brief and are spaced out within the film. There are no explosions and only a short car chase. So if you want action you won't find it here.

Instead you get to think and wait and then think some more and wait again for something to happen. Corbijn offers us a sex scene with Jack and Clara, as a change of pace, but it went on too long. Jack has that assassin's paranoia about him. His personal sonar and radar and senses are always on. He sniffs out a hired gun out to kill him, before the guy even realizes he's been made.

Once that happens, Jack knows his location has been compromised. Is it the priest, the hooker, the client? I thought that this was far less of a mystery than it was intended to be. Jack's senses always told him when he needed to watch his back and take cover - but he was slow in figuring it out.

In Michael Mann's Heat - Robert DeNiro's character Neil McCauley said something about not getting attached to anything you're not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds flat. Jack lived his life the same way. It's apart of the job description. Until Clara.

In the 2nd Bourn film, The Bourne Supremacy, Jason spotted a guy out of place because no one who was local would have been driving a black Beamer in a small Indian town near Goa. In this film, Jack's instincts helped him spot a Swedish assassin in a similar way. That guy just doesn't seem right for this town. Neither did jack when he first arrived.

So Corbijn and Rowan Joffe, whose screenplay is adapted from the novel A Very Private Gentleman written by Martin Booth, have laid out a think piece but are selling it as an action-spy-thriller. The visuals are fine, but the pace is slow. It is also a quiet film - talk is at a minimum. Jack's phone calls to his handler are terse - Jack might say 12 words and the calls last 20 seconds.

Clooney doesn't do Danny Ocean this time. Instead think of Michael Clayton only this time without a back story and with very little to say. What makes the film entertaining is not the overall story, nor the script, and certainly not the limited action - instead I loved every moment when Jack was with the priest, or the client, or the hooker. Those characters are the ones who make Jack human. Without them, he's too much of a methodical man. Build the weapons, have a cup of Cafe Americano, workout, sleep, and dream.

Clooney was just doing Eastwood without the squints or the snarls or the gravelly voice. Clooney fans will like the film, and you might too - but see it for everything else except Clooney. If you go to the film intending to watch for and enjoy the supporting roles, you will enjoy the film. If you love George Clooney, then you must realize that this film, The American, is not one of George’s finest.

Last updated: 2010-09-02 15:34:40 by JustMeMike