The American

From people on The Facebook I have heard nothing but how boring this movie was. I have heard from critics I read that the movie was smart, slow and ultimately rewarding. George Clooney is a strange animal. He has this old school movie star charm, but he often makes movies not for the general public consumption. He is not afraid to remove his natural charm to make a movie. He has always chased movies/roles that interest him, even if he has to fight hard for them. He is never content just being Clooney and doing that Ocean's 11 thing in every film. For every Ocean's he does a Michael Clayton and so on. The American, from the trailers, looked like Clooney's foray into the action movie, his Jason Bourne style role, but those reviews I mentioned at the top had me believing the trailers were quite misleading.

Jack(Clooney) is a man of few words and in those words most of them are lies. He is a killer, but "cold blooded" does not really describe him. he is certainly a man who has seen too much and done too much to ever really find peace and when he finds a girl, he has to kill her. This is the beginning of the movie. He is being chased by people from Sweden, so he hides in a little town near Rome. He wants to do one more job and then get out. He meets a hooker, he meets a priest and he tries to keep his head down. If this sounds a bit straight forward it is. Jack wants out of the game and he wants to take his hooker away and try and find some peace. That is pretty much it.

The American is a very slow, deliberate, quiet movie. It might be the first arthouse assassin movie. It opens with this quick burst of violence, has 1 or 2 more quick bursts of violence, including a quick car chase, but other than that, it is a very moody, atmospheric film. It has a minimalistic score, but every time you start to hear the score, you pay close attention because the film gets tense in those moments. The cinematography is gorgeous and we get a lot of wide shots of sunsets, bodies of water and bodies of water. There are long stretches in the movie where we hear almost nothing because nothing is being said. We are just watching Clooney quietly try and live his life. Can it be boring? Yes, there are times when I was wondering what the hell the point of it all was.

Clooney has excelled in playing these guys who are lonely, but they are lonely because of what they do, or that they prefer it that way. In this movie, it is clear the character does not want to be lonely any longer. He finds this knock out hooker and while it starts as just him paying for sex, it moves into something much more. There is a fair amount of female nudity and there is a sex scene that could be considered awkward because it is not set to gorgeous music and you just see the girl the whole time. There is break from it. It certainly turned on the couple seated to my right. Of course, the movie may have just been boring them.

The direction is nice, if a little on the lacking side. Both of the on-foot chases look exactly the same, which is never a good sign for an action scene. The blocking could have been a little less bland, but the set up the camera and shoot thing kind of works. I mean there is toying with close ups and such, but often the movie is shot from this semi wide angle and we just kind of see what is in camera.

Also, it is the kind of movie where you know exactly how it is going to end and you spend most of the movie hoping it does not end that way. For whatever reason, because of the subject matter, the star, the tone, or pacing, you just know exactly where the movie is going and that is not a bad thing necessarily, but I did spend the final 40 minutes hoping to be thrown for a loop.

There is not a lot to recommend about the movie and there is not a lot to talk about, either. The movie is this pseudo navel gazing arthouse movie starring one of the biggest A-listers in the game. There are no other known American actors, the director is not well known, the guy who did the score is a German musician and the story does not appear to be something that interests American audiences. I am sure there are plenty of people who feel like you did not get the movie if you did not like it, but I am not that person. I enjoyed the film, but have no trouble believing people out there will find it dull and awfully slow.

Final Grade: C