The American is a film that drops you off right in the middle of its intrigue. George Clooney and a naked lady friend are sharing a quiet moment out in a remote cabin. All appears to be going well. They are carefree and in love. But when they go out for a secluded walk in the snow? Well, that’s when the roof caves in. Clooney notices tracks in the snow, his eyes dart around like a wild animal used to being hunted. Shots ring out, there’s scrambling and confusion. A would-be assassin, hidden in snow camo, continues his assault from a distance. Nevertheless, Clooney seems to know exactly how to deal with the situation and he makes quick work of the gunman. Then he turns and kills his girlfriend very matter-of-factly. It’s the first big hook of the film. It comes as a shock, it tells us some things that we need to know about Clooney’s character, and it makes us curious to learn more. If The American was able to keep up this level of intrigue throughout its runtime, then it would have been an easy recommendation. But, as my interest in Clooney’s character started to wane over the course of the film, how I ended up feeling about this one started to become more of a muddy subject.
In a very general sense, if you’ve seen one assassin movie, you’ve pretty much seen them all. There’s a collection of scenes where the assassin works out in a dingy apartment. He assembles and cleans his weapon collection on his kitchen table. He dines alone. He lives anonymously. He’s the best at what he does, and it’s largely because he has a routine; a methodology that works. Up until the point where we start the film he has been untouchable. But now, something new has entered his world, usually a woman. For the first time in his life our trained killer has something that he cares about. For the first time in his life he has a weakness. How does he reconcile these new feelings and this new danger with the lifestyle he is trying to maintain? Can he get out of the life of professional killing before it all comes crashing in on him? And if he does, will he even be able to function as a normal person after being so set in his ways? The American doesn’t just adhere to this familiar story archetype; it practically fetishizes it. A large portion of the screen time is given to procedural shots. Clooney’s character works out, he builds things, he travels, he drinks coffee, and he visits prostitutes. He does these things silently; he does them habitually. It resembles a human life less than it does maintenance on a machine. The soundtrack is minimal and sparse. A lot of the film passes in silence. When Clooney does come across another character they converse in a slow, deliberate fashion. The characters that populate The American are short on words and long on stone-faced glares. The attempt is to give the viewer little, but to make everything they’re given count. For the protagonist potential danger lurks around every corner, the source of which is uncertain, as is its motives. We don’t want to be led by any manipulative, suspense building music. We don’t want to be explained the plot by any long-winded, expositional dialogue. The viewing experience is the mystery solving. Who is this man? Who are the people after him? Where is this all going? The fact that we are given little clues in the form of cinematic rather than realistic actions, sounds, and dialogue is what makes us need to keep paying attention. It is an interesting strategy at taking on this sort of material, and if executed skillfully enough I could see it really working. But this film didn’t quite pull it off for me. Once you factor in the slow pace of the plot, the repetitious scenes of mundane acts being performed, the soundtrack that is sparse of music and sparse of dialogue, and it all starts to add up to a movie that can really put you to sleep. The brevity of language alone was enough to frustrate me after a while. Watching this film was a lot like trying to engage a grumpy old grandfather trying to watch a football game in conversation. You’re not going to get much out of it other than hateful looks. If I ever knew someone that I shared as much silence with that the characters in this film shared I would definitely stop hanging out with them. The American engages us so rarely on a human level that it feels more like reading an instruction manual than it does watching a normal film. Follow these steps and you will get to the end of the movie. First, pay attention while we establish our characters, second, watch the rising action, etc…
The reason for the dry, technical tone of the film is largely the way it mirrors Clooney’s character. Not just your regular, run of the mill assassin, Clooney is an excellent machinist. He designs and assembles custom weapons for each job. Here, he isn’t asked to do the killing at all, he’s merely charged with the job of building a rifle for a mysterious female employer (Thekla Reuten). Clooney’s character doesn’t have much experience interacting with other humans, but he knows building and maintaining machines inside and out. Consequently, he handles life like he does machinery. He must do x amount of exercise a day to remain operational, he must drink x amount of coffee to stay alert, he must see a prostitute once a week in order to experience regular and beneficial sexual release. You get the impression that he has drifted so far into this world of building machines that he has become a machine himself. The snag in this routine comes when his relationship with his regular prostitute Clara (Violante Placido) starts to become more than professional. Once the Swedish assassins from the beginning of the film start showing up in his new Italian town he has to begin questioning how they keep finding him. The man who gets him his jobs suggests that his female companions are selling him out. Clooney, normally an icy professional, now must decide whether or not he should leave his life to build a new one with Clara or kill her because she might be a mole for his enemies.
George Clooney is an actor that I’ve found charming and engaging in a handful of performances, but who has a habit of coasting through many others seemingly on cruise control. Put him in a Coen brother’s movie and suddenly he’s an animated character actor, put him in a generic thriller and all you’ll get from him is dry readings and no sense of character whatsoever. I think, being familiar with his Coen brother collaborations, I like him as an actor better than most people. There have been several times when I’ve told people I’m going to see the new Clooney film and they’ve audibly groaned. “Why are you doing that? Are you a menopausal, middle aged woman?” Why then, does he take so many boring roles? Does he really need the money at this point? Shouldn’t he have enough FU money from ER residuals alone? I can’t answer these questions for sure, and I kind of wish the man would start becoming a lot more picky with the projects that he chooses to do, but I have a theory that the reason he signed on for this film might have something to do with Violante Placido. She’s not an actress that I was familiar with prior to this film, but she may just be the most beautiful person on the planet. It wouldn’t surprise me for a second if Clooney wanting to get cast opposite her in sex scenes is the entire reason for this project to exist in the first place. The director Anton Corbijn is known mostly for his work with music videos. I can’t imagine where his connection to Clooney comes from or why this particular script ended up being his first mainstream film. Could this all be an elaborate puppet show put together by Clooney in order to pick up a chick? I did find their sex scene to be rather long and gratuitous… Despite this, Clooney in boring mode is about the most perfect fit for this material and how it was presented that I could imagine. And as the years wear on, his face is starting to look old and craggy enough to really pull off this sort of hard-boiled thriller type stuff better than he has ever been able to before. He was almost Robert Mitchumy in this film. I got much the same feeling from him in this that I did from Mel Gibson in Edge of Darkness earlier in the year. You know, without all the public backlash and whatnot. I’m interested to watch this generation of actors transition into being the elder statesmen of the film world. Placido, in addition to being stellar to look at, has a very warm and engaging presence, and was able to quite easily get you sympathizing with her character and biting your nails when it looked as if she might be in danger. What I didn’t get was any indication of her past or the wounds that likely led to her becoming a prostitute. As a character she seemed far too self actualized for her profession; but I saw this as the demands of the script and how the character was written rather than any sort of deficiency in Placido’s performance.
Despite the overall feeling of boredom that took over as the film progressed, there were a handful of things that impressed me throughout. The photography here is all really nice. Even when there is little actually happening on screen the images are all striking enough to keep at least part of you appreciating what you’re seeing. The Italian mountain village setting really can’t be beat. It’s like the film is set in some sort of expressionist maze filled with impossible angles and the endless staircases of surrealist paintings. If half of the reason this film exists is so that Clooney could get his hands on his co-star, then the other main reason for it to have been made is the excuse to shoot action in this beautiful setting. In particular, a cat and mouse sequence between Clooney and an assassin sent to murder him in the town’s cobblestone alleyways was stunningly rendered. It’s night, the stones are slightly wet, reflecting the glow of the streetlights, and the whole thing takes on a beautiful, otherworldy feel. This one scene is like the color film equivalent of the cinematography in The Third Man and it was used almost exclusively to sell this to the public in the trailers.
The tension building, thriller aspect of the film was also able to start paying off fairly well towards the end. All of the scenes where Clooney’s character has to spend time with Clary, not knowing whether or not he can trust her, worked very well. Their interactions are tense and uncomfortable. You can’t tell whether she’s reacting to Clooney being standoffish or if she’s uncomfortable because she thinks that the jig is up. You know that she has a gun in her purse, but for what purpose is unclear. Clooney’s hand is half clutching his own pistol at every moment and it feels as if one could kill the other at the drop of a hat. And all the while they have to pretend that they’re still a happy, functioning couple. At this point we’ve spent enough time with the characters to care whether or not they die (and maybe even whether or not they end up together?). It’s the one aspect of the film that I feel was properly built to, and it ended up paying off the viewer’s patience nicely.
At the end of the film you realize that this was a story told from a very limited viewpoint. It details very specific happenings of one time and one place from the viewpoint of one character. Earlier in the summer Winter’s Bone took on the thriller genre using a very similar story structure and did so with extraordinary results. In that film I was so enthralled with what was happening in front of me that any questions about back-story seemed irrelevant and beside the point. Any specific details about where the characters came from or what the particulars of their business were would have been unwanted. You could fill that in with your imagination later and it wouldn’t matter much to the experience of watching the film. With this film I had a very different experience. About the fourth or fifth time I watched Clooney wordlessly drive somewhere I started to ask myself why someone would want him dead. He doesn’t do anything but sit in an apartment and make guns. There are about a million people in the world that make guns, who cares? And why does he get paid tons of money to make these special guns? Something off the rack wouldn’t do the trick? And why does he have to be in Europe to do this job? People don’t buy guns in the States? With this sort of in the moment storytelling I’m not supposed to be asking these questions. Here, because I was bored with what they were giving me in that moment my mind started to wander. Wander to things like butterflies. Why does Clooney study them before bed? Why does he have a tattoo of one on his back? Why does the same endangered butterfly show up on screen multiple times? I’m sure there must have been some sort of symbolism, but for most of the film I was too busy trying to keep my eyes open to care.
