The American

As the film opens, we find George Clooney in a nice chalet in Sweden, drinking whiskey with an attractive lady. The two of them go on a walk, and the pair of them are set upon by a pair of assassins, a situation which only George walks away from, having pulled a gun and shot back, much to his girlfriend's surprise. Cue the credits.

After the credits have done their thing, we find that George has travelled to Italy via Germany, by train, where he gets into contact with a shadowy boss/handler person. The boss tells him to go lay low in a town in rural Italy, where he is called upon to do a job. It would seem that George is a hitman, who also seems to specialise in crafting custom made assassin's weapons. He's asked to create such an item for a woman, who he meets, and gets the spec of the gun she wants.

So, he settles in to this quiet little town, begins work on building this nice little automatic carbine rifle with a suppressor which breaks down into a briefcase. While he's there, he gets to know the local priest, strikes up a relationship with a local hooker, and begins to question the whole life he leads.

Well, I say question. That would imply there would some kind of dialogue or monologue in which he does so. Oh no. Dialogue is very thin on the ground in this film, and when you get it, it's very oblique and off the point. If you were to fast forward to a random point of the film, you would almost certainly see one of the following: George silently working on the gun. George silently mooching around the town. George silently driving somewhere. George in his apartment silently trying to get some sleep.

Alright, maybe the film's at most half composed of such scenes, but I do reckon there's a good half in which we're watching George look troubled. That's the pace. George does a lot of thinking, and we think with him, and look at the scenery with him. Which is not to say that a film composed of such longueurs can't be rewarding, but there's times when they're pretty long longueurs.

Happily, the rest of the film is pretty gripping, as we see the portrait of the killer as an eroded, paranoid, spent individual develop. It also has a good go at puncturing the mystique of the hitman; combat, when it occurs is brutal, quick, and is about shooting the other guy first, and without hesitation. There's not a lot of glamour or finesse about it, which is all to the good. Definitely more of a character study than a thriller, but as such, quite a good one.