The AMERICAN

“The AMERICAN” (George Clooney)

After starting with a bang (literally) ‘The American’ dissolves into a bland movie where absolutely nothing happens. It’s like ‘In Bruges’ without Colin Farrell’s character, just Brenden Gleeson walking around being grumpy.
And then the unanswered questions – mainly, why did he do what he did in the opening scene? Did he think the girl led the assassins to him? Was it just the ‘rule of the job’ to leave no witnesses? Or did she give bad head?
George Clooney plays ‘Jack’, an American hitman in Europe. For the longest time I thought the purpose of this film was to make fun of the fact that European hitmen are stupid and only American hitmen can get the job done – thus the change from the title of the book it was based on, “A Very Private Gentleman” to “The American”.
Normally, going to a George Clooney film means you’re going to see something well worth viewing, so I was anticipating seeing another Oscar caliber movie – This isn’t. It’s not as bad as ‘Syria’ because it’s just the opposite of that convoluted mess – there was too much going on in ‘Syria’ – there’s nothing going on in ‘The American’.
I could, if I wanted to play spoiler, tell you the entire story in 3 or 4 sentences.
Most of ‘The American’ is void of dialogue – if you like looking at scenery you might enjoy this jaunt through the snow of Sweden & countryside of Italy. Scenes of Jack driving, walking, drinking coffee & putting together a rifle for a fellow assassin to use dominate the running time.
The only refreshing change I enjoyed was the addition of female nudity (Woo-hoo!) when Edward (The name Jack uses in Italy) engages an exclusive relationship with a prostitute named Carla (Violante Placido)
The only other positive I can come up with is that in its sluggish redundancy there was an underlying tension that builds slowly as you wonder who is going to try to kill Jack – Is he the mark his fellow assassin has been assigned to take out - Or will it be someone unexpected, like Carla? But unfortunately, you can pretty much see the ending coming from a mile away, so instead of leaving you with a breathless ending to make up for all the boredom, the finale fizzles like the rest of the film.