The American is a very strange beast. The big name casting of George Clooney and the high octane promotional trailer suggests that the film marks Anton Corbijn’s post-Control assault on the mainstream. It is, in fact, a much slower and more ponderous affair than the publicists would have you believe. Light on action, incident and even dialogue, it is more Bergman than Bourne.
George Clooney plays the eponymous American, an assassin and master gunsmith. After an unspecified conflict with some Swedish ne’er do wells, he is forced to go into hiding in a remote Italian town. Here he adopts the name Edward and pretends to be a photo-journalist while working on one last job -making a customised weapon for a beautiful client called Mathilde.
This idea of the hitman laying low is not a new one but oddly enough, Corbijn has declared his influences here to be the great American Western. He makes this explicit at one point where Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America plays in the background at a local bar but for the most part, the connection is rather more oblique. For me in fact, Corbijn seems to have employed the more troublesome aspects of the Western genre; specifically the use of generic types of character, the gorgeous assassin, the avuncular priest and the redemptive tart with a heart.
The central character is only marginally better drawn. The dominant mood of this American is one of anxiety and paranoia -a state that Clooney excellently manifests in his constantly moving eyes and tensed jaw. He even appears more physically hunched, a ghost of a man. Unfortunately, Jack is not a great character and Clooney soon reaches a dead-end.
Of course when a film looks as coolly stylish as this, it’s very easy to become seduced and I never grew bored by what I saw on screen. Corbijn has created another beautifully shot film full of interesting visual flourishes. He re-interprets the Italian countryside as a lonely, sparse landscape and its villages as dark mazes illuminated queasily by patches of neon and fluorescent light.
In the end though, The American is all style with precious little substance. This “Man with No Name” is easily forgotten.