Thriller about an assassin (played by George Clooney in serious mode), who hides out in Italy for one last assignment. He strikes up a friendship with a local priest and a beautful woman, but can't escape the aftermath of a botched job in Sweden.
This is director Anton Corbijn's follow up to the brilliant Ian Curtis biopic Control.
This slow-paced and meditative thriller from Control director Anton Corbijn sees George Clooney in fine form as an assassination facilitator gearing up for (what else?) one last job. Like all of these sorts of stories, he’s a bit over the work and, in the words of his boss, losing his edge by developing a bit of late-career fondness for normal human interaction. A pretty standard thriller framework, yes, but one that Corbijn and Clooney infuse with mood and atmosphere, eliciting satisfying results.
Clooney’s understated performance is what really sets the film apart from most other entries in the criminal retirement genre; his demeanour allowing glimpses at his minor existential crisis while he seeks a semblance of normalcy through possibly ill-advised relationships with those ever-reliable professionals – priest and prostitute.
Boasting a medieval and mountainous Italian setting that is almost a character in its own right, The American is at its best when contrasting Clooney’s normal and not-so-normal activities against a background of ever-present tension. But whilst the film ends in a logical manner, its conclusion does come as a slight letdown. A reminder, perhaps, that there’s a price for everything, especially when telling the story of a mysterious stranger in a far-off place whose deadly past has a way of catching up with him.
By Steve Newall, Flicks.co.nz
Much like the recent HANNA, this is a movie that tries to be a moody arthouse contemplation of violence and the man, but ends up as just a beautifully shot and slow moving wannabe. If it's art mixed with cerebal action you want, try Nicolas Winding Refn's DRIVE or PUSHER Trilogy. THE AMERICAN tries way too hard to be as super cool and detached as Kubrick or those cool French new wave movies of the 1960s that Truffaut and Godard specialised in so well. Clooney is fine, a great lead. The problem is a script that is way too shallow - it just thinks it's deep. But just having your hitman protagonist chat about the meaning of life with a local priest does not a deep film make. Nor do nude scenes shot in a red room under a red light in a brothel indicate "art." Anyway, if you want a slowburn film about violence with a hitman protagonist, go see the fabulous original DAY OF THE JACKAL. Heck, see De Niro in RONIN! Not that THE AMERICAN is bad, it's just over-long and has pretentions of grandeur. You could cut 40-minutes and still deliver the same sense of dread and slow inevitability - and a more seasoned director most likely would have... Two stars for gorgeous George, who makes it watchable throughout a very long long duration in which you feel all of that 1-hour 46-minutes tick inexorably by...
it looked like one of those 70's arthouse movies with the wooden acting to boot. Like others, I waited for it to start, saw where it could go with the assassin after him and who it would be, and thought it could still get exciting when that happens...but it didn't.
Usually you can judge a great movie by the first 5-10 minutes - well this movie proved this theory wrong. As the best part of the movie was ONLY the first 5-10 minutes ! Sorry George even you couldn't pull this off !
This is the first time I've walked out of a movie. An hour in to the movie and still waiting for it "to start". One of the 5 worst movies we've seen.
Almost didn't go after reading the previous reviews. Pleased I ignored them and went. A brilliant, intense, gripping portrayal of solitude.
Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in "Le Samourai," by Jean-Pierre Melville.
George Clooney returns, setting aside the warm and witty persona that his fans love, and giving them instead one of his darkest and most unsympathetic characters: an ice-cold professional killer marooned in loneliness and fear.
Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so.
It is a reasonably skillful exercise in genre and style, a well-made vessel containing nothing in particular, though some of its features - European setting, slow pacing, full-frontal female nudity - are more evocative of the art house than of the multiplex.
Thriller shoots first then asks existential questions later. For quite some time.
We've been told the NZ release date for this flick is Thursday, 25th Nov 2010.
Release date: November 25th 2010.
We haven't received times for this movie in this location yet. However these are updated as cinemas announce them, so check back soon. Hopefully the lovely cinemas in your location will choose to play it shortly. ~Ed.
