You’ve probably never heard of director Anton Corbijn‘s modest thriller The American, starring George Clooney, and you’d be forgiven if that’s true, the 2010 film sort of coming and going in a blip. It did okay at the box office and reviews were mostly on the positive side, but time has been good to this hidden gem and it’s only improved since. If you’ve been wanting to watch something with some raw edgy suspense then good news, this is it, but it’s a whole lot more. How so? Here’s 5 reasons why it’s time you finally watch The American.
That Opening WTF? Moment
Without a good hook, most movies in this genre have to work doubly hard to keep eyes on the story, but there’s no having that here. Beginning in a lonely patch of trees in the distant forests of Sweden, a man named Jack (Clooney) enjoys time alone with his lover Ingrid (Irina Björklund), the pair clearly close to if not in love. It’s romantic and sensual, as they warm themselves in a nude embrace by a fire in the night before taking a stroll in the morning along the crisp snow-covered grounds. However, things are not as they appear and when they come upon a single set of footprints in the otherwise pristine blanket of white, Jack recognizes that they aren’t safe. Indeed they are not. What happens next might having you thinking you know where it’s going but then, in a flash, it all changes. Shockingly so.
Corbijn Directs The Hell Out It
Set mostly in Italy, The American is a good looking movie made all the more so by what Corbijn does in inserting Jack and us into the story. He revels in the silence and stillness of the rural streets and alleyways of pastoral Italian countrysides, weaving us through the narrows of Jack’s ever pressing odyssey with patience and stringy tension. This is a thriller that binds its action with extended moments of brief purposeful conversation and stunning imagery that refuses to take us by the hand, and it’s glorious fun to be part of, where a filmmaker knows he’s defying odds by steering hard left from expectation in keeping us in a familiar story sunk deep into an unfamiliar setting. There are some moments along the way that are just perfect, any fan of the art of cinema sure to find much to celebrate.
The Three Women
While the story is all Jack, with Clooney in just about every frame, he encounters three women along the way, each having great significance on his fate. There is of course Ingrid at the start, who we learn haunts him as the story progresses, decisions made that fill him with regret as his nights become darker. There is Mathilde (Thekla Reuten), an assassin like him, mysterious and efficient who is in need of Jack’s skills but is bound to an promise that ultimately casts a shadow over her every move – and where it leads Jack. And then there is Clara (Violante Placido), a beautiful local prostitute with whom Jack takes special interest, the two sharing time away from her profession to become more than a little entangled. All three of these magnificent women become the pillars for which the story rests, Jack’s mission, in complicated ways, tied to them all, and as such, they linger in the seams with great weight. These are women done right in a story that could have easily misused everything about them.
Jack
George Clooney isn’t your typical movie star, a guy who knows how he got his fame, those early days of ‘sexiest man alive’ and a run on TV earning him the spotlight, but as an elder statesman of Hollywood, he’s become one of the best actors of this generation, and here, he is mostly alone, his usual gaggle of trusted on screen pals absent, leaving him with the whole thing on his shoulders. And he wears it well, Jack just the kind of character he feels built to bear, like his work in Michael Clayton and Up In The Air, men with few words on their lips but no less impactful when they do come to voice. Clooney is sensational here, in great physical shape yet giving the troubled killer harrowing sadness the more the story clicks on, Jack a broken, tragic figure that by the end has us dumbfounded by the cruelty of fate. He’s absolutely riveting.
Making The Turn
You’ll probably watch the trailer before you decide to watch this, and if you do, then you’ll most likely think you know what this is, a decent action movie with gunfights, steamy sex, and a simmering George Clooney. However, you’ll soon realize that while all those things are in this movie it is not what its packaging makes it out to be. Remember when Ryan Gosling’s Drive hit theaters and audiences went up in arms because it wasn’t a Fast and Furious ripoff, despite how the trailers made it seem so? Welcome to The American, a movie that did the same thing a whole year earlier. However, just like Drive, the more you stick with it, the better it gets, the film a genuinely dark and suspenseful experience that sinks all its teeth into the characters, making it smart, erotic, meaningful, and challenging. So … you know, all the good things a movie can be. Watch this.