The American (2010)

In its first 10 minutes, The American boasts three dead bodies; an unknown enemy for a dashing hero; a beautiful but lethal potential love interest; and George freaking Clooney, an actor who would be the sure-shot first pick for 007, were he ever cast as a Yank. Sounds like the recipe for a perfect spy thriller, doesn’t it? The thinking man’s Salt, if you will. Instead, it’s just a brilliant setup for a film that has no suspenseful build, no satisfying crescendo, and no plot to speak of.

The opening scene finds a devilishly handsome man (Clooney) with salt-and-pepper hair and matching facial scruff canoodling with a voluptuous woman. All that lovey-dovey stuff comes to an end when the two leave their snug cabin for a walk in the snow-covered wilderness and are ambushed by a pair of Swedish assassins. After dispatching the would-be killers, the handsome canoodler is forced to kill his blameless companion. He is apparently in a “no witnesses” business.

It’s never quite clear what business that is, but you get the gist of it when the American hightails it to the Italian countryside to meet his shadowy handler, Pavel (Johan Leysen), who arranges for him to rendezvous with a European beauty named Mathilde (Thekla Reuten). He–his name is Jack or Edward or Mr. Butterfly or Signore Farfalle, depending on the scene–agrees to build her a long-range, submachine rifle, with some other techy mumbo jumbo specs. While he’s doing that (and also doing shirtless pushups, pull ups and calisthenics), he pretends to be a photographer working on an American guidebook, befriends a local priest named Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), and has a few steamy trysts with Clara, the prostitute (Violante Placido).

The American makes promises in its opening scenes that it simply does not keep, promises that are only aggrandized by Antonin Corbijn’s direction and Martin Ruhe’s cinematography, which take the form of the type of slow paced, artily shot, moody crime drama of the 1960s and 1970s that would star Steve McQueen. But all that arty camera work, Italian mood music, and even full-frontal nudity (of only the women, disappointingly) can’t rescue scripter Rowan Jaffe’s go-nowhere story, adapted from Martin Booth’s novel, A Very Private Gentleman.

I kept waiting for clues about who was behind the assassination attempt and what our loner hero’s real secret was. Is there something sinister in his past that makes him need both a priest and a prostitute? Why has he adopted the butterfly as his totem, even having one tattooed between his shoulder blades? I waited and waited. And waited. Slow build is one thing, but this morose, soporific film (I caught myself just on the edge of consciousness several times) dragged on for 105 minutes without an answer to any of those questions.

Instead, we watch Jack do some more pushups, get his car fixed by a mechanic because his cover identity is “no good with machines,” go to an Italian version of Mailboxes Etc. to pick up rifle parts, and build, balance, check, rebuild, rebalance, and recheck a gun. Slowly. In complete silence. You still awake?

Stripped of both dialogue and his characteristic sparkle, Clooney just barely manages to keep the audience watching this introspective, untrusting lone-wolf character. The actor’s skill shines through in his sly half-smiles, fleeting sideways glances, and aggressively masculine physicality. One love scene with Clara is so natural and animal, you end up wishing the rest of the romance weren’t so forced and flimsy. But that sex appeal is not enough to keep The American from turning into the movie version of an Ambien and a glass of warm milk.