The American

I am finding it very difficult to find a place to start talking about this movie.  I suppose I'll keep it blunt and simple to begin with.  The American is a bad movie.  It is not the kind of bad movie that I am angry about, but it just left me confused.  It's hard to even put a synopsis together because everything about the movie is either left unexplained, or is completely forgettable.  George Clooney plays a character of varying names that is being followed by men who are trying to kill him.  This forces him to into hiding in a small Italian village where he is given a job to secure a weapon for a client.  While staying in the city he falls in love with a local girl and also finds that he is still being hunted.  If you think that is an awful summary I can only agree with you.  That is honestly the best I can do with the subject matter.

The reason it is so difficult to piece together something coherent about the movie is because nothing happens for any tangible reason.  Here are just three things that are left completely unexplained:  The reason people are trying to kill George Clooney.  What his relationship is to the man who tells him where to hide.  His background that makes him so good at what he does.  The list goes on, and I feel I would be spoiling the film if I went on too much further.  But honestly, there really isn't anything to spoil about the film.  If you can't spot the "twist" from a mile it was probably because you fell asleep.  I don't even think it can be called a twist.  This is because there are only five characters in the movie.  One is George Clooney, one is a priest, and one is a love interest that has no part Clooney's criminal life.  So you can flip a coin and either way you guess you're right.  The movie isn't based on this twist or anything, but it is entirely pointless.  It doesn't add any dramatic effect, because there is no previous relationship developed between anyone and George Clooney.  Most of the times when someone gets back-stabbed and it really hits the audience it is because that person had a close bond with the person they just betrayed.  No one has a close relationship with Clooney in this film, so it didn't really matter that it happened.  It may as well have been some henchmen, because there is no character that really feels like they matter in this movie.

To illustrate that point, I haven't even used any character names from the movie.  That's because I can't remember any, even after looking on imdb.  Clooney's character changes from name to name, and the only one that stuck was Mr. Butterfly, and I'll be damned if I write this whole review calling him that.  This whole movie is just a lot of George Clooney, but he doesn't do anything.  If you were expecting action, stay far away.  I can probably count the amount of bullets fired if I just use both hands.  Now I don't need a movie to have action to be good, but I need something, anything, to happen.  I'll admit that I did like how the movie started.  I thought that the intro packed a punch and I thought that it was beautifully shot up past the credit sequence.  After that, the movie quickly falls into a cycle.  That cycle is:  Static shots of George Clooney, car commercial or landscape shot, George Clooney talks to someone, car commercial or landscape shot.  By car commercial I mean that it is a shot mostly of landscape with him driving his car through it.  These occurred so much, that at one point I honestly expected the camera to pan up to reveal financing information spelled out in the clouds.  This cycle nearly lulled me to sleep.  Nothing happens in any of these shots.  To call this a quiet movie would be an enormous understatement.  I think all the direction that Clooney was given was to move his eyes around a bit, and then maybe furrow his brow pensively if he felt up to it.  I guess he raised his voice once or twice, but even then I think it was still well within a polite speaking volume.

The other reason that this movie was so quiet was because it had little to no soundtrack.  There are moments where there is music playing but most of the time it is diegetic.  Sometimes music plays to tell you that it is a moment of tension, but that's about it.  Music is another thing that isn't always necessary, and I also understand it's absence in the film.  It didn't really bother me, but I did find it really bizarre when we hear a section of the score and clip from a scene from Once Upon a Time in the West.  Now I'm not a director, but I'd like to think that this clip was put in for some reason, that it had some resonance within the narrative.  There is actually nothing I can think of that ties the two films together.  The American does not deal with any of the themes that define Once Upon a Time in the West.  There is no revenge, no hired guns, no territorial struggle.  I suppose you could argue that Harmonica and George Clooney's character are similarly ambiguous about their motives, but at least in Once Upon a Time in the West it is fleshed out and explained.  With The American we are left just scratching our heads.  I don't think it would have been such an odd inclusion if they didn't introduce it through music first.  So, in a film with no soundtrack, we get a reference to one of the most famous movie soundtracks of all time for no reason at all.  I guess it's and Italian movie and George Clooney is in Italy.  There is the connection!  I even looked back to see if it maybe foreshadowed something but, unless you really stretch an explanation, I don't think it does.  It just seemed an odd choice that really stood out to me coupled with the lack of a soundtrack.

Another thing that felt completely out of place was the inclusion of jump-scares.  Yeah, you read correctly, jump-scares.  There are a few moments in the film that just throw a loud noise at you or a flash of black across the screen, and it just left me dumbfounded.  I can understand if the movie is supposed to be about subtlety or trying to create a subdued ambiance for the audience, but then to throw jump-scares in?  That is about the lowest level of subtlety you can get.  These occur with the same regularity as scenes of true action, they might even be more common.  This is one of the many reasons that during the scenes where George Clooney was in danger I felt no tension.  So much nothing happens in this movie, and continues to happen in scenes of danger that I just stopped caring.  That actually sums up pretty well how I felt about the movie after about forty or so minutes.  I just couldn't care about any of it anymore.  There was nothing developed about anyone.  Every character was kind of thrown at you and just left for you to guess about.  I couldn't tell you why any character did anything.  I was just waiting for a moment where something illuminated everything, and until that moment I wasn't going to be invested in anything that was happening on-screen.

Just to better explain that I am going to discuss the love story of the film.  George Clooney meets a prostitute in one of the towns he visits and they end up falling in love.  Well, they at least say they love each other, but based on what happens in the movie I can't really believe that to be true.  After they have sex Clooney makes an offhand comment about her not having to act when she's with him.  He then tells here that he is there to get pleasured not pleasure her.  I don't know the exact line, but that is pretty close to verbatim.  Somehow this causes the prostitute to seek him out and continue the relationship for no charge. They then have dinner where she asks if he has a wife.  When he says no she states that he still must have a secret.  After these two wonderfully romantic encounters, the two are in love.  That is it, they are the loves of each other's lives.  Clooney is now willing to give up his life as a black market machinist for this woman, just as long as he can get away from those who are trying to kill him.  Normally I find movie romances to make very little sense, but this one is pretty unique.  I keep searching my memory for why they are together, and none of it makes sense.  It is just another layer of confusion to add to this already toppling narrative.

I really could go on.  I haven't even got into the priest character or the female client who Clooney is working for.  It just isn't worth it though.  I've got my point across.  I didn't find any grain of purpose in any character in this film.  The narrative has gaping holes in it that seem to be there for a reason, but I can't determine what that reason is.  There are some beautiful shots in the movie.  I don't want to take away from that, but at the end of it I felt that I was more attached to the scenery than any of the characters.  If you really like still-photographs of George Clooney then go see this movie, otherwise I'd just skip this one.



If you have some feedback on this review please leave me a comment.  Maybe I missed something entirely that would fix the whole movie for me.  If that is the case let me know.  I would love to hear why anyone liked this movie.