Start with one part Euro art house sensibilities, add some strong noir overtones, and finish it off with 1960s/’70s-style Hollywood thriller gloss, and what you’ve got is Anton Corbijn’s excellent The American.
Fitting in with this feel is The Clooner King, Gorgeous George, putting on his best McQueen face and totally owning the screen in a great, darker-than-the-average leading man role (highlighted by a cold-blooded execution he carries out in the first five minutes). It may be a cliché, but GG truly is a magnetic, old-school movie star in every way.
Here he plays the titular American, an armorer and assassin living a lonely, paltry, solitary existence, only communicating with the living when he phones his contractor to receive his next assignment. Otherwise he keeps his head down, attempting to stay off the radar in order to avoid some unspecified Swedes on his trail.
By that synopsis, you would think this is a one-man show; it really isn’t. The cast may be small but it’s perfectly formed—with the unknown on these shores, Violante Placido, deserving some serious plaudits for sharing the most on-screen chemistry with Clooney since J. Lo in the sizzling Out of Sight.
The beautiful Placido plays Clara, a local prostitute that GG’s character, Jack, befriends upon his latest move to a small, unassuming Italian country town. Starting up a love affair that is clearly more than merely about monetary transaction, Jack decides this latest job of building a customized weapon will be his archetypal “last.”
What Jack forgets, though, is that getting out of the game is never easy, especially when you lose your edge and start letting people in.
So set in motion is a lovely, low-key, low-tempo thriller that eschews Jason Bourne kinetics in favor of quiet character contemplation and slow-burn thrills. Of course, if you’re at all au fait with genre staples, then it’s very clear from the beginning exactly where all this is headed and how it’s going to end. But don’t let that put you off; it doesn’t in any way detract from the enjoyable journey we take to get there.
Budding auteur Corbijn, meanwhile, impresses again in only his sophomore big-screen effort after 2007’s Control. Not since Don’t Look Now has the use of such a picturesque, jumbled, confusing architectural location been so successful.
For Clooney, too, The American is yet another interesting, off-mainstream, successful movie. Long may he continue to confound us with his obscure choices.
[etRating value=“ 4”]
Fitting in with this feel is The Clooner King, Gorgeous George, putting on his best McQueen face and totally owning the screen in a great, darker-than-the-average leading man role (highlighted by a cold-blooded execution he carries out in the first five minutes). It may be a cliché, but GG truly is a magnetic, old-school movie star in every way.
Here he plays the titular American, an armorer and assassin living a lonely, paltry, solitary existence, only communicating with the living when he phones his contractor to receive his next assignment. Otherwise he keeps his head down, attempting to stay off the radar in order to avoid some unspecified Swedes on his trail.
By that synopsis, you would think this is a one-man show; it really isn’t. The cast may be small but it’s perfectly formed—with the unknown on these shores, Violante Placido, deserving some serious plaudits for sharing the most on-screen chemistry with Clooney since J. Lo in the sizzling Out of Sight.
The beautiful Placido plays Clara, a local prostitute that GG’s character, Jack, befriends upon his latest move to a small, unassuming Italian country town. Starting up a love affair that is clearly more than merely about monetary transaction, Jack decides this latest job of building a customized weapon will be his archetypal “last.”
What Jack forgets, though, is that getting out of the game is never easy, especially when you lose your edge and start letting people in.
So set in motion is a lovely, low-key, low-tempo thriller that eschews Jason Bourne kinetics in favor of quiet character contemplation and slow-burn thrills. Of course, if you’re at all au fait with genre staples, then it’s very clear from the beginning exactly where all this is headed and how it’s going to end. But don’t let that put you off; it doesn’t in any way detract from the enjoyable journey we take to get there.
Budding auteur Corbijn, meanwhile, impresses again in only his sophomore big-screen effort after 2007’s Control. Not since Don’t Look Now has the use of such a picturesque, jumbled, confusing architectural location been so successful.
For Clooney, too, The American is yet another interesting, off-mainstream, successful movie. Long may he continue to confound us with his obscure choices.
[etRating value=“ 4”]
