The American

My Grade:  C

Beautifully shot, The American is a feast for the eyes, but not the intellect.  Underneath the gleaming exterior is a cliche ridden story with the twists and turns that a twelve year old with three inch glasses could see coming... without his glasses on.  Maybe I’m just jaded and have seen way too many hitman movies.  Probably.

          

Set mostly in a small town in Italy, they use some of the more beautiful locations I have seen in film.  From a secluded river tucked in a idyllic alcove of trees, to big winding roads that snake their way through the rolling hills of the countryside.  Beautiful stuff.  But beyond that, there’s not much to this film.

          

Not only did we get bombarded with stereotypes in the characters (which we will get into later), but we also didn’t learn enough about them to care.  When George Clooney’s character’s life is in danger, I don’t want him to die because he is George Clooney... not because I am invested in his character.  Yea, he had to kill his friend at the beginning of the film, but it didn’t seem necessary.  Maybe that’s just me.  I’m sure he had his reasons (I wish the writer had of let us in on them, though).

          

Despite this, it is nice to see a hitman movie that is basically a drama.  Of course there are guns and shooting, but for the most part, The American is a drama.  It’s a nice change of pace from the big-budget hitman films like Wanted and Lucky Number Slevin that are action packed thrill rides.  This film forgoes the action in order to explore (kind of) the double life of the hitman.  On the Netflix case, though, The American is falsely described as a “suspense thriller.”  Don’t let this mislead you like it did me.

SPOILER ALERT

It’s spoiler time!  In order to really let you in on what is stale and fresh in this film, I’m going to have to spoil a few things (which, incidentally, won’t matter since the visuals are the real treat here).  

          

First we will talk about the stale stuff.  The three main characters are stereotypes that we see over and over in film:  the hitman who wants out of the business, the priest with the sordid past, and the hooker with a heart of gold.  Stereotypes are not always bad, though.  If you take a cliche character and put them into a fun and original situation, you may strike gold.  But the hitman agrees to do “one last job” which, big shocker, he will probably die on.  This hitman also goes to a hooker for “comfort,” ends up falling in love with her and telling her to quit her job so they can run away together... blah, blah, blah.  You know that story.  Then the priest tries to break through to the hitman, but he is “unredeemable” because he has done too many bad things.  The list goes on and even includes the Mr. and Mrs. Smith ideal of a female and male hitman facing off, and the hitman movie favorite:  the employer who can’t let the hitman quit, so he tries to kill him.

          

The ONE thing that is interesting and fresh about this story is what the hitman’s last job is.  His job is simply to build a gun for another assassin so she can kill a target.  He doesn’t have to pull a trigger.  It turns out, though, that the other assassin’s target is him!  By the way, I saw it coming all along and any other halfway astute audience member will, too.  Not to ruin the movie for you (well I did say spoiler alert), but he figures out she’s going to kill him as well so he rigs the gun to backfire and she kills herself instead of him.  That was kind of a cool way to end it, but it didn’t make up for the other hour and forty minutes of trite story-telling.