Review

Review Date: 5-September-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk

The American (2010)

You had to wonder what was wrong with The American when the studio decided to release it on September first. This is the no-movie's-land of the year, when films emerge to panhandle for coins because they aren't splashy enough for summer nor artful enough for the Oscar race. Given the Academy's fondness for George Clooney, you know it's a dud if one of his movies appears at this time. And so it is. The American is a mere interval of minutes without purpose, innovation, or plot.

The opening finds a post-coital Clooney shooting his lover and two assassins and then fleeing to his handler in Rome (Johan Leysen, who looks like Daniel Craig in 25 years). It appears that the protagonist is an assassin himself, so a viewer starts thinking that he has bad guy remorse or One Last Job on his mind. However, these are but two of the clichés that rear their heads without developing into a theme. Clooney motors to an ancient, beautiful, and remote Italian town where he proceeds to establish himself as a cipher. The actor has grown in range over the past decade, and I suppose playing someone sans personality is a kind of feat, but it's not one that an audience can appreciate. His character does not have a point in life other than killing; he does not seem haunted by the past; and until the end he does not seem to be in real danger, although he is perpetually on edge and periodically stalked. What, then, is The American about? I have encountered more suspense in 30-second commercials.

Two more clichés pop up in human form. The local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) tries to excavate a soul in the taciturn foreigner but meets with failure. (Religion: deep.) Clooney starts seeing a hooker (Violante Placido, an oxymoron of a name) whose perfect breasts overlie a heart of gold. (These breasts are the most animated part of the movie. I kept thinking that their mistress should ditch her drippy john and go enjoy the shirtless life with Jacob Black.) Neither of these relationships is believable. The one interactive spark is lit when Clooney does business with a fellow killer (Irina Bjorklund). The spark is entirely of her making; although she can't get a rise out of him with flirtatiousness, she does manage to cast him in the light of a skilled professional, which is his only notable trait.

The title is ironic. Americans, particularly when they go abroad, are famed for being too boisterous and emotive, yet here the Yank is a human hearse casting a pall on the picturesque. How dull he is, and how little he merits his own movie.

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.