The American

The American

International Man of Mystery, Murder and Boredom.

Directed by Anton Corbijn

Starring George Clooney, Paolo Bonacelli, Violante Placido

This is “A Man Comes to Town” movie, made in the vein of seventies paranoid crime thrillers such as 3 Days of the Condor, Marathon Man and The Conversation. George Clooney plays Jack, an assassin on the run from unnamed Swedish heavies. The film traces Clooney as he goes on the lam in the Italian countryside, along the way providing assistance to a fellow assassin in his organisation, falling in love with a middle aged prostitute and seeking counsel and companionship from an aging Italian priest.

From the promising opening scenes of the film we see Clooney appear like movie icons of the past such as Roy Scheider, Marlon Brando and Cary Grant, as the slow-burner beginning introduces elements of intrigue, mystery, double cross and cold professional murder. What begins as a potentially slick and beautifully shot crime thriller, under the direction of the more than capable Anton Corbijn, slowly crumbles and fumbles into a painstakingly, slow, mind numbing pastiche of bad 70’s cinema. Think of a tired Gregory Peck in The Omen crossed with a lack lustre episode of Thunderbirds. If you loved the Limits of Control (which nobody did) you’ll still hate The American.

We watch as Clooney murders some Swedes, murders some Italians, parks his run down Fiat sedan about 15 to 20 times and makes numerous phone calls from shabby pay phones uttering tiny lines of ambiguous dialogue. More murders, more car parking, some intimate love making under red lights, more phone calls, more parking, and on it goes. This is lazy and uninteresting film making. Atmospherics and moodiness are standing in for character and audience engagement. The American is a series of wasted opportunities delivering goliath clichés, scene after monotonous scene.

This film has postcard perfect scenery, shot exquisitely by Martin Ruhe, an artful and delicate director in Anton Corbijn, who together with Clooney, one of the more interesting leading men in mainstream modern cinema, should have delivered a brilliant and intriguing picture. However it is simply impossible to connect with characters who have no life. We are watching cut outs, outlines, the whisky priest, the wide eyed hooker, the lonely assassin, there is nothing more to any of them. Without character there is no suspense, no twists, no tension, nothing, because nobody cares what happens to people who don’t exist.

For a quiet study on good hearted, loner assassins, give me Ghostdog, give me Mr In-Between, give me The Matador, hell even give me Munich over this tiresome waste of a fairly large talent pool.