In counterpoint to the sound and fury that signals summer’s end, Dutch director Anton Corbijn serves up a quiet meditation on the loneliness of vocational murder in The American. If The Expendables is a callback to 1980s muscle-man pics, and Machete a throwback to 1970s exploitation flicks, The American is a think-back, recollecting cold-war thrillers like The Day of the Jackal.

The American arrives in Italy.

George Clooney plays Jack, a disquieted assassin sent to rural Italy after a sojourn in Sweden goes deathly awry. He’s to do a “custom job” that involves little more than building a rifle for a mysterious client (“you won’t even have to pull the trigger”). The requirements of Jack’s profession keep him detached from the world and make him unable to form any long-standing relationships. Love affairs that evolve into genuine affection tend to end in bloodshed. Distrustful even of his handler, Jack is tacitly at war with himself as he struggles to resist the human connection he desperately craves.

Clooney, increasingly resembling a seasoned Cary Grant, is at his most attenuated here, in both form and performance. Channeling the smoldering intensity he brought to Michael Clayton and finding deeper reserves from which to express his anxiety, every movement, every look reveals a man on the cusp of implosion. From edgy sideways glances to the slow, clenched chewing of his gum, Jack is a man at once composed and consternated. When he speaks, it is with deliberate thrift, heedful of disclosing vulnerability.

The rest of the The American is equally reserved. The music, when it rises, drifts just below the surface, as cautious and mistrustful as Jack. The photography is a halcyon relief from the hyperkinetic jitters that have overrun cinema in the 21st century. With measured consideration, cinematographer Martin Ruhe carefully constructs each sequence, utilizing the labyrinthine streets of Castel del Monte and Sulmona to capture Jack’s mental state as he navigates blind alleys ripe with danger and, like Jack, Ruhe wastes not a single shot.

Clooney spends much of The American
looking over his shoulder.

Unfortunately, the script relies heavily on standard movie tropes to lure Jack into relationships with the local townspeople: the beautiful and virtuous prostitute who falls for him; the town priest eager to befriend and redeem him; and the shady handler who may be leading him astray. The one exception is Thekla Reuten as Mathilde, the beautiful, chameleon-like client who is reflexively beguiling but wholly professional. She switches tactics as easily as wigs and keeps Jack looking over his shoulder with each encounter.

Ultimately, it’s Corbijn’s assured direction and Clooney’s fiercely focused performance that drive The American. As thrillers become diluted by insecure directors fretful of narcoleptic audiences, it’s refreshing to discover one that demonstrates a movie can take its time and still be engaging.

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