“The American”: George Clooney’s killer trip through Italy

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:02:00 +0000

Abstraction is where genres go to die. In the post-"Bourne" era, the idea of a lone operative working in the shadows, holing up in rustic European towns while dodging impeccably cutthroat, improbably glamorous enemies, seems almost quaint, even kitschy -- the cloak-and-dagger equivalent of a Hummel figurine. A hired killer, living by his own eccentric but determined code of ethics? How utterly darling.

Anton Corbijn's "The American," adapted by Rowan Joffe from Martin Booth's novel "A Very Private Gentlemen," works at the edges of the espionage genre, where reflexivity shades into self-parody. It's built from stock, salvaged from bits of countless other films, but rather than disguise that fact, Corbijn incorporates the rust of those worn-out parts into his design. We've been here before, and so have the characters, and everyone's grown tired of the game.

As the titular operative, George Clooney is torpid with the weight of his past. (We could call him Jack, or Edward, but having several names is as good as having none.) The only time he moves quickly is when his life is threatened, as in the film's opening sequence, when he and a comely Swede take a post-coital walk and chance upon an assassin's tracks in the snow. He pulls her close to a hillside with barely a word, ignoring her bewildered questions as he pulls a gun from his coat and fires into the trees. A man's body falls to the ground and he sends her to call for help--and then, the instant her back is turned, he shoots her in the head.

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“The American”: George Clooney’s killer trip through Italy