THE AMERICAN – anton corbijn – 4.1 / 10

With very few exceptions, almost every film about a hitman tells one of three stories: the hitman falls in love (usually with the target), the hitman wants to retire after one last job or the hitman becomes a target himself.  The American manages to squeeze all three of these overused tropes into one film, creating a sort of hitman cliché amalgam.  The filmmakers also toss in some teeth-grindingly obvious symbolism and a couple of the stalest stereotypes going (the priest with a tragic past and the hooker with a heart of gold) in what appears to be some sort of weird attempt to create the most cliché hitman film possible.

The pleasures of the film, minor though they are, owe entirely to the eye of director Anton Corbijn, a photographer made famous by his photos for the liner notes of U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree,’ and cinematographer Martin Ruhe.  The American is sprinkled with some very striking images that capture small town Italy in a way that I’ve never seen before.  There’s a whole lot of beautiful imagery in this film.  Unfortunately, almost none of these visually arresting shots have much to impart in terms of theme and character.  They’re very pretty to be sure, but that’s all they are.

Not helping matters, Corbijn drags out every shot far longer than necessary.  The intent, I imagine, is to emulate the style of European art films in order to lend the whole thing some sense of gravitas.  But when the plot is this ridiculous, the stately pace of the film just gives the audience more time to focus on how absurd it all is.

The American wants desperately to be mysterious and profound, never giving the audience information if it can help it.  For instance, it’s never made clear who exactly George Clooney’s character (named either Jack, Edward or Mr. Butterfly, depending on who he’s talking to) works for.  We never learn who it is that’s trying to kill him or why they’d even want to.  Important conversations take place mostly offscreen with only their immediate aftermath being shown to the audience.  But it all just comes across as needlessly cryptic and obtuse.

And then there’s the film’s closing shot, certainly one of the most trite ever to appear in a film that pretends to be so serious and arty.  Clooney’s character sports a butterfly tattoo on his back (unintentionally alluding to How I Met Your Mother) and makes a couple references to his love of butterflies (including an endangered one that lands on the arm of his prostitute paramour).  At the close of the film, as Jack / Edward / Mr. Butterfly is dying, he finds the strength to make it out to the clearing in the woods where he once had a picnic with his hooker girlfriend (and where they saw the butterfly) just so he can die in his favorite spot.  And as his car rolls to a stop, the endangered butterfly floats up above it, slowly climbing into the sky, a hackneyed metaphor for Jack / Edward / Mr. Butterfly’s soul.

The moment is so jaw-droppingly obvious that I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing.  If you thought the shot of the hummingbird out at sea after the U-boat attack in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button was too on the nose, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.  That Corbijn hangs the end of his film on such an obvious and jejune image is just embarrassing.  And it calls into question the slight good will the film’s imagery had built up to that point.  In retrospect, I’m kinda shocked that George Clooney, an actor known for having a pretty good eye for material, would have anything to do with this nonsense.  Guess he just wanted to make a movie in Italy.