Once again, George Clooney gets to play out his real life midlife crisis on screen in The American, only this time he gets to bed a beautiful Italian woman and drink a whole lot of watered-down espresso. Kind of like what he does every day, except this time George plays Jack/Edward, a multi-pseudonymous American assassin/secret agent kind of guy who is on the run from some Swedes who want to kill him. Turning to an old handler/contact named Pavel (Johan Leysen), Jack finds himself hiding out in Italy, where he takes one last job to finance his retirement. Thus unfolds the web of intrigue as Jack procures a weapon for female assassin, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten), at Pavel’s request, all the while dodging men who want to kill him and suspecting everyone around him of potential threat, including the beautiful Italian prostitute he falls in love with, Clara (Violante Placido). The American sounds like a no holds barred, kick-ass action thriller, right? Actually, it’s not. It’s actually a character study of a haunted and lonely man who wants nothing more than a way out, but finds himself constantly on the run from his past, in both literal and metaphorical senses. The movie relies heavily on beautiful Italian scenery, the faces of the actors, body language, and brief outbursts of violence to communicate with the audience. In that sense, it’s very similar to a samurai film or spaghetti western (and indeed, one of Sergio Leone’s classics plays on the TV in a bar). It’s also one of the hardest things for an actor to pull off, and Clooney’s command of his facial expressions and body language is very impressive. He says so much with just the quirky tilt of a brow or a tightening of his jaw that words are unnecessary. This movie is as tight as a drum. There’s not a single wasted shot in the whole of the film’s 95 minutes. The musical cues are very subtle, when they’re present. Director Anton Corbijn laces this movie together like the teeth of a clock, or like the winding narrow streets, courtyards, and corridors of the Italian hillside village where Clooney’s haunted assassin tries his damnedest to run from the people on his tail. Every word of dialog in Rowan Joffe’s script, however terse, is loaded with meaning and conveys something. It all fits together, and to pay attention is to be rewarded. Fortunately, Corbijn is a director that has no difficulty guiding the viewer’s eyes to the proper places, thanks to some wonderful shot framing from Corbijn and cinematographer Martin Ruhe. This is a beautiful movie, taking full advantage of the natural beauty of the Italian countryside, a film whose construction is as intricate as the plot, which is as simple and familiar as it is ethereal and potent. While the movie isn’t for everyone, it’s an excellent film. To put it bluntly, the movie rewards viewers for being as paranoid as the main character, and that sense of danger lurking around every corner, of long stretches of silence broken up by the forceful assembly of an assault rifle or the sputtering backfire of a Vespa, is what really carries the movie through to the climax. US correspondent Ron Hogan is The American. That’s why he’s the US correspondent, not the Swaziland correspondent. That’d make him The African. Find more by Ron at his blog, Subtle Bluntness, and daily at Shaktronics and PopFi.
title: “The American Review” ShowToc: true date: “2025-07-31” author: “Fred Jeanbaptiste”
Characters talk at length about the recoil of guns and the velocity of bullets, of sound suppression and the tolerances of tiny screws. Weapons are endlessly tested, fiddled with, re-adjusted and then tested again. Clooney’s Jack is a lonely, distant character who says little, largely because he can’t afford to. Having lost one love interest during an attempted hit from a group of Swedish killers, he’s advised by his superior (a lizard-like Johan Leysen), “Don’t make any friends.” Holed up in a rural town in northern Italy, Jack goes about completing his final mission, an apparently simple task of constructing a custom rifle that can fire rapidly and quietly over a long distance. The act of killing won’t be Jack’s. Instead, the task will be carried out by the cold, enigmatic Mathilde (an oddly frightening Thekla Reuten). Once the rifle’s handed over, Jack’s free to retire. Like the crumbling streets of stone around him, Clooney’s character is tired yet noble, like an ageing samurai warrior, monosyllabic, yet capable of conveying equal parts menace and distrust with a single glance. This is undoubtedly Clooney’s finest performance since Syriana or Michael Clayton, and he plays the part with skill and commitment. Jack’s coldness is perfectly counterbalanced by Paolo Bonacelli’s warm performance as Father Benedetto, a man of God with a dark secret of his own. Long periods of silence are punctuated by occasional flashes of low-key, startling violence. Startling not because of their gore or brutality, but because of their mundanity. Like a butcher slaughtering cattle, The American’s killings are carried out with muted thuds and a casual, chillingly indifferent air. The American is so well scripted and shot, in fact, that it’s easy to overlook just how clichéd and generic much of its story is. The thriller genre is filled to bursting point with the good-hearted hookers and one-last-job assassins found here, and it’s to screenwriter Rowan Joffe’s credit that he’s taken a stock premise and invested it with such depth. Possibly the most understated (and, some might argue, uneventful) thrillers in recent years, The American is an intelligent and often tense study of an anxious, sullen assassin and the toll that years of killing have taken on him. Corbijn’s film slowly, fastidiously dissects the mechanical process of murder with all the precision of its central character constructing his gun. And for that reason alone, The American is one of the most arresting and well-crafted dramas I’ve seen this year. Follow Den Of Geek on Twitter right here.
