Global Comment

Where the world thinks out loud

“The American” at the 2010 London Film Festival

[rating=4]

Rudely awakened from his Swedish love nest, cold-blooded American Jack executes three people. The striking landscape he inhabits is too exposed, too clear from the clutter of civilisation to shelter a professional man of violence. He feels compromised, but a city won’t do either, that would be too intrusive for his Bushido sensibilities to cope with also. What he needs is a happy medium and he needs it yesterday.

Rome. Only assassins ever use pay phones anymore. On the other end of the line Jack’s Italian connection, Pavel, gives him an out: an old mobile phone and a grotty Fiat Tempra. It doesn’t feel right and neither does his safe house. Jack scopes it out, another pay phone, a tractor, and a woman sweeping her step, plus an open line of fire. Jack u-turns for the mazy streets of Castel del Monte – if it was good enough for the Medicis, it’s good enough for Jack.

Pavel gives him a job. Construct a specialist rifle for the enigmatic Mathilde to her exact specifications. Professionalism drives Jack to perfection. He’s “Day of The Jackal.” He is a Samurai folding his Katana a thousand times as he rifles the weapon, lovingly creates the suppressor from spare parts found in a garage, gently fills the tips of the bullets with mercury. “Don’t make any friends Jack,” Pavel warns him. “You used to know that.”

Is Pavel serious? The poster tells us that George Clooney is “The American.” He is the very embodiment of the modern liberal American abroad. Sophisticated, urbane, cultured, he even speaks the lingo. Barack Obama would be proud to claim this killer as one of his own – after all, his anti-Bush credentials are impeccable. So how does Pavel expect handsome Jack to lie low and keep himself to himself?

He can’t.

Father Benedetto immediately sets about trying to save his soul: “You can’t doubt the existence of hell, you live in it.” Jack can’t connect, can’t reach out, perhaps he’s a metaphor for all of the States: a country not easily able to make friends, always fearing the worst, always looking for an angle , worried that anyone who gets close will turn out to be a sycophant ready to plant a knife in anyone’s back at a moment’s notice. Perhaps that’s why Jack decides to give his heart to Clara, the local hooker; money might make him feel right at home.

Anton Corbijn’s “The American” is a taut, sharp thriller, existential around the edges and tense where it matters. Castel del Monte is beautifully lit with green and orange hues, a modern twist on “The Third Man’s” Vienna, a place to be lost and rediscovered in more ways than one. Corbijn’s camera loves the women but is besotted by Clooney. That old school Hollywood magic reserved and thought lost with McQueen, Newman and their like is uniquely preserved in George, who is the last movie star standing. Want proof? Just check out that thought bubble when he first meets Clara; watch his expression before he makes one final alteration to Mathidle’s rifle and his heroic, climatic “Long Good Friday” car journey. George Clooney is “The American” alright .