Ryan McNeil
I’ve always wondered how craftsmen can work alone. Don’t they get restless?…Don’t they get lonely? Perhaps they don’t get restless, because the hours seem to fall away when they’re doing what they love and what they’re good at. Perhaps they aren’t lonely, because having people around when they work would just be a bother.
Perhaps, as we see in THE AMERICAN, it’s just “better that way”.
Jack (George Clooney) is an assassin. When we first meet him in Sweden, he kills two snipers with stone-cold precision…and then the woman he’d been shacking up with. In that instant we learn a lot of what we need to know about Jack – he dangerous, he’s decisive, and he’s very good at what he does.
He then flees to Italy, where he meets up with his contact named Pavel. Pavel sets him up with another job, one that will work out of a small town named Castelvecchio. Jack retreats to this tiny village, and tries to go about his business and keep to himself. We’re not entirely certain what the job is, but Jack’s cover to people he meets – like the fatherly priest who takes him in – is that he’s a photographer.
It’s around here that two women come into jack’s life. The first is a prostitute named Clara, who seems to call to something inside of Jack. He spends most days saying barely more than the minimum, but for some reason opens up just a little bit more when he is around her. The other woman is Mathilde. Mathilde is the client for the job Pavel set him up on. She too seems to connect with Jack, this time on a professional level.
The question is – can either woman be trusted?
At the risk of sounding cliché, they don’t make films like THE AMERICAN anymore. It’s the sort of story where the beauty is in the details, and the elegance is in the methodology. It’s the sort of film that doesn’t feel the need to spell out the tension at hand, so convinced that there are still audiences patient and intelligent enough to understand the tension.
(Clooney’s character), an assassin and weapons craftsman is the sort of person who is all about stillness, focus, and minutiae. These elements are evoked in the film’s style, one with very little dialogue, even less of a musical score, and lots and lots of scenes where very little story seems to be happening. While this film is a detail junkie’s delight, it’s also the sort of thing that will test many moviegoer’s patience. It is not interested in riveting you with action-packed car chases; its far too busy wanting to unnerve you with the wonder of whether or not (Clooney) is truly safe in a seemingly empty café.
Going hand-in-hand with all of this simple elegance is Clooney’s character, “The American”, and the cache that carries. Even though he is a quiet professional who keeps to himself, as an American in a quiet Italian village he comes packaged with a certain mystique. (Listen closely in a café scene and you’ll hear a radio playing an Italian song called “I Want to Be American”). People open their doors to him and embrace him like they would a weary relative, all in the name of hospitality to someone so cool. You have to wonder if he’d get the same sort of latitude if he were an Italian assassin working in America.
THE AMERICAN is directed by Anton Corbijn, who gets back behind the camera after his impressive debut film CONTROL. Corbijn (pronounced kor-BAIN) being a noted photographer, obviously has a talent for giving his films evocative visuals. He frames every single scene like a still photograph, then walks next to us through the gallery telling us his story of intrigue. It’s a very effective style, though I should note that I spent much of this movie pining for a version in Corbijn’s typical black-and-white.
I suspect THE AMERICAN caught a few people off-guard as they weren’t expecting something quite so quiet and introspective. While for some that might have brought on a restlessness waiting for Clooney to get his Bourne on, for me it brought on a sense of content. Seeing this man live his life the same way he works – quietly, methodically, and all alone – was a fascinating change of pace at the multiplex, and a welcome throwback to a different era in Hollywood.
Fantastic review, Ryan! I think that if I was expecting an action movie, I would’ve been disappointed. Maybe now when I watch it, I’ll appreciate it for what it is.