The American Could Be Foreign to the Audience By Art Byrd

Call me a sucker, because I got sucked into seeing The American. Months ago, I saw the trailer for the film featuring George Clooney as a hit man in a foreign land. Even the poster looked cool. I watched the behind-the-scenes of the making of The American on Yahoo. I was psyched.

At this point, I followed my usual mantra about not reading or watching any reviews, as I wanted my experience to be fresh. Big mistake. They might have saved me from a very frustrating experience. 

Even my friend Jason from Los Angeles tried to throw me a movie life preserver by advising me to instead see Machete, the action flick about a man bent on revenge -- my kind of movie.

Then, at a Labor Day picnic, Scooter, another friend, said he wanted to see Machete with me for fun and laughs. But when we couldn’t see the movie until the end of the week, The American surfaced again.

The movie starts with Clooney’s character Jack with a beautiful woman, Ingrid, played by Irina Bjorklund, lying on a bed. The next morning, Jack and Ingrid take a winter’s walk in an open field. He notices some tracks and his hit man “Spidey Sense” kicks in. Jack and Ingrid take cover. Of course, someone starts shooting at them. Jack just happens to have a gun in his parka pocket and kills the shooter. Ingrid is bewildered. Jack tells her to call for help and as she is walking away, he shoots Ingrid execution style.

Jack calls his boss, Pavel, a scary-looking guy played by Johan Leypen. He tells Jack, “Don’t make friends,” so he can find out who is coming after Jack. But Jack goes to a small town in Italy and starts to make friends with a priest and a call girl.

Pavel gives Jack a job -- not to kill, but to make a weapon -- for another assassin, Mathilde, played by Thekla Reuten. Then things get crazy as Jack is hunted, betrayed and hunted again.

The film was directed by Anton Corbijn, who comes from a background of still photography. The movie scenes are long and drawn out. The characters -- including Clooney -- do things that have the audience wondering why but never getting a satisfactory answer. Clooney was dry and pouty in the movie; his charm was there but it got lost in the slow, dragging plot.

In some foreign films, they throw in things they want you to figure out later. Here’s my conclusion: the movie should have been called The Foreigner instead of The American.

Edited by Michele Ristich Gatts