The American Staff Review
You know a spy movie is serious when it is slow and moody. Sure, there can be explosive action; but if it is
serious, it must
unfurl. Also, there has to be a lot of ambiguity -- you are a voyeur into this world; you never know what is going on; you may pick things up -- but that is as far as it goes. The cards are never all on the table.
Finally, in the serious spy movies, there may be really bad bad-guys that are actually good guys? That is outside the word of the craft. In the life, there are no good guys.
The American hits all of these and more. Dialog is spared. There are wide angle shots of European villages. The guns are small caliber and low profile and still very lethal. Everyone broods. There are meetings and exchanges, and the audience is one step behind George Clooney the whole way.
The good news is that The American does a few things very well. The first is by the end, it seems to more or less add up. There are a lot of things left unclear, but the big picture is reasonably apparent; and, I felt, reasonably satisfying -- although not a happy ending -- but then again, this is a serious spy movie).
The second thing it does: The most important thing is that it absolutely must convince us that Clooney is good at his craft -- being an assassin. We see him sit with his back to a wall. We see his eyes flicker around with situational awareness. We are allowed to see him jump at shadows without making him simply paranoid. People really are out to get him, and he knows it. Perhaps his ability to manufacture things with minimal tooling is a bit unrealistic, but it is handled well.
The other operatives in the movie are equally slick, decisive, and photogenic. The American gives us high-grade killers to keep us interested during the moody, drawn-out narrative.
The final thing it does that is excellent is that it keeps the tension high without either burning us out or simply making us feel used. Someone is screwing over Clooney -- he knows it, we know it. None of us know who, and Clooney has to suspect everyone while keeping himself both safe and in the game. Can he trust the priest who seems to see right through him, or the hooker with the heart of gold that he is falling for, even though he knows that the likely results of that are disastrous? How about his controller who gets him missions, or the other beautiful, smooth, and deadly operative -- his female counterpart? Can he trust her?
This question of trust is the engine and the heart of the movie, and it takes what would otherwise be a deadly dull scenario -- Clooney simply has to put together a weapon for certain specifications and get it to his opposite number -- and makes it a reasonably tense nail-biter. Honestly, this is in large part due to Clooney himself who is imminently watchable and does hard-edged but sympathetic like nobody else. It doesn't hurt that he also looks razor sharp in a suit, something The American takes full advantage of (as does, of course, every Clooney movie). Finally, it plays to his "I'm an expert" persona that he has honed to perfection in just about everything he does.
So he is the right guy for the job!
Without Clooney, with someone less iconic in the role, it would have disappointed me. As it stands, his screen presence was enough to carry me along with it and watch with interest as it unfolds.
--Marco Chacon
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