Focus Features, Goldcrest Post Production London, Greenlit Rights
George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli, Johan Leysen, Irina Bjorklund, Filippo Timi, Lars Hjelm
Jack (Clooney) is a hired assassin who is on assignement in Sweeden when things go badly. He vows to his contact that the next one will be his last assignment. He is sent to a small town in Italy, out in the country, and holes up waiting for a new assignment and looking for some rest and relaxation. He makes friends with a parish priest (Paolo Bonacelli) and a local prostitute Clara (Violante Placido) until his contact Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) shows up to give his assignment of constructing a very special weapon for her. He may think he’s relaxing though, but he may be in a lot more trouble than he thinks.
This is not a James Bond spy thriller. This is much more like a foreign film. It’s very slow and peaceful and spends a lot of time developing the characters. We get to spend a lot of time watching Jack building and preparing the weapon which gives us a lot of time to see what kind of man he is and what he thinks. The relationship with the prostitute who he comes to really care for is also very slow developing. There must be a connection with the priest and Jack as well, but we’re slowly told what the story is. But to say that it’s a slow moving film with slowly developing characters is not a bad thing. Its just that you don’t want to rent this expecting fast pace chases and crashes and explosions. This is very meticulous and is more about the story than the action. However it’s a very cleverly crafted character study of Jack’s situation and George Clooney is really good in this role. He’s excellent. The other characters are pretty good as well. I enjoyed this in a way, but after watching “Red” just before it, it seems painfully slow to develop. When it was over I looked back and said, “Well that was really different, but it wasn’t bad.” If you like movies strong on character, you’ll probably enjoy this.
EdG – EdsReview Dot Com – A Movie Review Blog
Movie Review - The American (2010) {R},
