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'The American' is handsome but dull

Clooney is admirable, but often not much of interest is happening

by Rich Heldenfels Beacon Journal popular culture writer

Published on Wednesday, Sep 01, 2010

George Clooney is a classic movie star. Handsome. Dapper. Blessed with both a sense of humor and a social conscience, each of which was on view at Sunday's Emmy awards.

But none of that means that he is always going to make the right choice, especially when it comes to movie roles. while he often chooses well, now and then he tackles something like The American.

I can understand why Clooney chose it. as the title character, he reminds the audience of the spiritual line from actors such as Spencer Tracy and Gary Cooper to Clooney. Like them, he has a powerfully expressive face. Like them, he can seem vulnerable without losing an underlying masculinity.

I know, this sounds as if I have a terrible man-crush on Clooney. And I confess to one, for all the reasons I have already stated. And there are times during The American when my admiration for his acting was considerable. But, oh, the movie!

Written by Rowan Joffe (Last Resort) from a novel by Martin Booth, and directed by Anton Corbijn (Control), The American stars Clooney as Jack, an assassin for hire who, as the opening scenes of the movie suggest, may have been doing his job for too long. Either he is losing the edge he needs to stay alive, or the urge to keep killing for money.

After a failed attempt on his life, Jack goes into hiding in a small Italian town. He still has work, building a customized rifle for use by another assassin. But he also begins to think about his life, in part because of developing relationships with a prostitute (Violante Placido) and a priest (Paolo Bonacelli).

As producer Jill Green says in notes for the film, The American focuses on "a solitary figure who wants to find romance and redemption, despite his escalating inner turmoil." The movie is more interested in that turmoil than in plot — where the audience will be way ahead of the characters — or even logic, since Jack's pursuers have a very difficult time with someone who appears to be an easy target.

The American also tries to say something about global perceptions of Americans, especially lone wolves like Jack. is he just an American or, as the title and a bit of dialogue say, the American? In one scene, the camera lingers over a television screen showing an early scene in Once Upon a Time in the West — which is not only one of Italian director Sergio Leone's westerns, but one in which the the American icon Henry Fonda plays a murderous villain. even though Jack is working in Europe, and for Europeans, does his Americanness make him recognizable as a cowboy and a killer? for that matter, Clooney is also a modern-day Fonda. So is Jack, who is no stranger to violence, doomed to villainy or still able to save himself?

Unfortunately, The American gives the audience plenty of time to think about such things while watching the movie. It is agonizingly slow, with long shots of people driving, and seemingly longer pauses as they think between delivering brief (and sometimes platitude-laden) lines. The characters intermittently intrigue and the performances by Clooney and Bonacelli impress. But this is the kind of movie where, in time, you may begin to wonder if anything is going to happen. And when something does, it feels flat.

Clooney is an actor worth watching. But there are limits to how long I can watch him just think, when the movie around those thoughts offers so little.

Rich Heldenfels writes about popular culture for the Beacon Journal and in the HeldenFiles Online blog at http://heldenfels.ohio.com and on Facebook and on Twitter. He also does a weekly video chat for Ohio.com. He can be reached at 330-996-3582 or rheldenfels@thebeaconjournal.com.

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Tags: admiration, audience, george clooney, spencer tracy

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