Movies Reviews

The American – Movie Review

By Ron Wilkinson Sep 7, 2010, 14:24 GMT

Anton Corbijn directs George Clooney as a veteran assassin who decides to walk away after an ill-fated hit.  While waiting for instructions for what’s to be his final job, he hides in a rural Italian town, and strikes up surprising friendships. ...more

Of the most visually thrilling escapist yarns ever made. Italian golden age cinema takes on a gun fetish.

Although director Anton Corbijn has a few documentaries/narratives to his credit, this film is essentially his feature debut. It is the first film dealing with a fictitious hero, “Jack” taken from the mystery thriller novel “A Very Private Gentleman” by martin Booth. Producers Anne Carey, Ann Wingate and Jill Green were all closing in on the rights to the book over the last decade.

They agreed to play nice and cooperate on the film and the result is an outstanding rendition of a great yarn. To describe George Clooney as fantastic would come as no surprise to his fans. To declare Anton Corbijn one of the best new directors of the year is the shocker.

It appears the producers had to make this film on a tight budget. Either that or they wanted to take a huge gamble just for the thrill of it. Probably the former. The cast and crew are a great group of folks but in their world of filmmaking they are virtual unknowns (Clooney excepted).
Corbijn’s and cinematographer’s Martin Ruhe’s only previous splash is the hit “Control” and that film deals with very different subject matter. They went from a rock star biography to 20-something year old mystery/thriller novel. That is quite a change and quite a risk for the filmmakers.

The risk paid off. Corbijn’s past as a still photographer apparently imbued in him a gift for composition. The scenes in this film are simply luscious, especially the shots of the villages and countryside of the Abruzzo, Italy locations.

But it’s even better than that. Not only did Corbijn grasp the tremendous scenic potential of Italy, he also had a deep, perhaps subliminal, love of the Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns; a love that extended to the overall “golden age of Italian Cinema.”

The look and feel of this film is like that of the Italian neo-realist icon “The Passenger” by Michelangelo Antonioni.

Jack has run out of choices. He is at the end of his rope. He is having dreadful thoughts that killing people is not all it's cracked up to be. In fact, he may be killing himself at the same time. He can’t even shack up in a quiet country hideaway in frozen Sweden without somebody taking pot shots at him from the trees.

His dates end up with him plugging one or more bad guys who are out to kill him for reasons he can’t explain. He can’t even explain how they find him; let alone why they want to kill him. The only thing that keeps him alive is a supernatural instinct for sensing danger.

But those dates, they are really worth it. The sexiest women in the world come panting to his feet. It’s all he can do to holster his pistol long enough to draw his pistol; stop shooting long enough to make those long, slow camera shots last and last.

When a director has to deal with George Clooney in an assassin death film that is as serious as a heart attack the one thing he has to avoid is James Bond territory. As Maxwell Smart would have put it, “This film comes “that close” to crossing the Bond line.” The line that separates “High Plains Drifter” from r. Bond jumping across a pond of alligators to safety. Just when that line is about to be crossed, Corbijn’s own instincts for danger are activated and he veers away into the dark and desperately lonely world of Jack the assassin.

Along with the spellbinding shootouts, the mesmerizing Italian scenery and the mouth watering Italian wine (pray there will not be a run on Montepulciano d’Abruzzo) there is pretty durn good gun making in the film. James Bond never slapped together an automatic weapon from old car parts like Jack does. Honing his parts with Honda motorcycle precision in his dirt-floored shack. Incidentally, there were a few key steps left out of both the silencer/suppressor fabrication and the explosive bullet mercury filling. Take it from the guy who knows.

But, what the heck, James Bond never made his own custom fabricated assassin rifle from used Fiat transmissions. “It’s 370 mph muzzle velocity, about 20 over what you wanted…” But then, on the verge of Jack morphing into Maxwell Smart, Corbijn steers back to more familiar territory. Death is stalking Jack, getting closer and closer. His only refuge is to find a woman who loves him. But every love is one more sign he is losing his edge; one more shovel of dirt over his coffin.

The grittiest, most realistic assassin film of the year. Don’t miss it.

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Directed by: Anton Corbijn
Written by: Rowan Joffe (screenplay) and Martin Booth (novel—“A Very Private Gentleman”)
Starring: George Clooney, Thekla Reuten
Release: September 1, 2010
MPAA: Rated R for violence, sexual content and nudity
Runtime: 105 minutes
Country: USA
Language: English
Color: Color