THE AMERICAN review

Bourne on valium.

The American is the second movie I have seen this week that defies expectations (Monsters promised monsters but gave us a love story instead). The marketing campaign for The American has sold it as a spy thriller, so you would be forgiven for expecting shoot-outs, car chases and shadowy government agents. You get a couple of those things but only a tiny portion of each. This is no James Bourne thrill-ride that unfolds at breakneck speed. Instead it is a slow and ponderous character study about a hit-man going through an existential crisis – it’s Bond with a conscience.

The opening sequence of The American, director Anton Corbijn’s follow-up to his brilliant debut feature Control, is brave and brutal but ultimately rather troublesome. Jack, an ageing assassin (played by an ageing George Clooney), sits by a log fire in a cabin in Sweden drinking red wine with a beautiful woman (there is no such thing as a non-beautiful woman in this film). They seem contented. So far, so Bond. Jack then gets shot at by a sniper in the woods and he doesn't only kill the shooter but also kills the woman he is with simply because she is a witness. It's a stunning and unexpected opening that the rest of the film unfortunately doesn't live up to. Jack is then sent to lie low in Italy for a bit by his boss until this mess is cleared up. Hardly an original premise but, hey, it's George Clooney; a modern movie icon normally full of charm playing against type, so we're interested to see what happens.

And what happens is, well, not a lot really. Clooney is never off the screen and a lot of film simply focuses on his face and his movements (including scenes of him building a gun that are oddly mesmerising). The dialogue is minimalist so it's a good job that he is a magnetic screen presence - his face able to convey about a hundred different emotions at any given moment. It is a film about this man and his thoughts and him seeking redemption. Clooney is very good in the role and one wonders if any other Hollywood actor of his age could have pulled it off, or indeed wanted to try.

Jack is holed-up in a small, beautiful town in the Italian countryside where he befriends a Priest, Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), falls in love with a prostitute named Clara (Violante Placido) and is asked to make a bespoke gun for a lady, simply known as Mathilde, which will turn out to be his last job. It doesn’t so much stick to genre conventions as live by them. This means there are some unintentionally hilarious intended-to-be-inconspicuous ‘spy talk’ in various cafes. And Mathilde’s hair inexplicably changes dramatically each time she meets up with Jack. You wonder if the director is taking the piss a little.

It is a slow and predictable story interspersed with the odd action scene. Yet, despite this, I found myself gripped until the very end. I think this is down to the presence of Clooney and also how beautifully shot the film is. There is not one scene in the entire film that isn’t visually gorgeous. Corbijn used to be a photographer and it pays off dividends here. He is an artistically gifted film director and one wonders if given a more engaging story whether he might be making classics in the near future.

The American is an old-fashioned spy film that harks back to 60s and 70s thrillers like The Day of the Jackal. It is not about action, it is about thought. It is the story of a man living in his own hell and struggling to break out of it and become someone else; someone better. It is well made with high production values and a gripping central performance. But, with such a talented director at the helm and one of his generation’s most interesting Hollywood actors, I suppose I expected something that little bit more special. And it’s difficult, once the film has ended, not to still be thinking about that shocking opening scene, especially when the final twist at the end doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

3 / 5