Review: 'American' a rare tale of agony and lament

“The American,” based on Martin Booth’s 1990 novel “A Very Private Gentleman,” is not an action movie in the conventional sense. It is perhaps more accurately described as an art house film with guns.

George Clooney’s character does something in the first few minutes of “The American” that lets us know right off that we will have to adjust our definition of movie heroics.

Protagonist he may be; White Knight he is not. Clooney plays Jack, a professional assassin who finds himself on the outs with a Swedish hit squad (for reasons that are never given) and flees to the mountains of Italy to hide out until things quiet down. While in the hushed solitude of sleepy Castel del Monte, Jack decides to take one last job.

It is obvious he has long since grown weary of the work as well as the suspicion and paranoia required to survive it. He has also denied himself the luxury of human affection. When he finds himself falling for Clara (Violante Placido), an Italian prostitute, he realizes it is time to get out and salvage whatever of his gnarled soul is left.

But after so many years ending lives, does he know how to start his own? And with so many out for his blood, will he ever be able to stop looking over his shoulder?

Those expecting a Jason Bourne type thriller will be very disappointed in director Anton Corbijn’s (“Control”) stylish, patient, picture-postcard beautiful film, though “The American” is very likely part of the greater conversation they seek. In many ways, Clooney’s Jack is Jason Bourne 20 years on — a shell of a man who has ejected his humanity bit by bit with every squeeze of the trigger, and every relationship spurned.

I remember walking out of “The Bourne Ultimatum” and telling my wife how much I wanted to be Jason Bourne (a testosterone-stoked yearning she found appropriately baffling).

I had no such feelings upon leaving “The American.” There is nothing about Jack’s life that is remotely appealing. Suspicion permeates every fiber of his being. He trusts no one. Each random stranger on the street is a potential threat, every automotive backfire the potential report of a weapon.

It is obvious Jack has no deep and abiding relationships. He craves human contact, of course, and finds his physical needs between brothel sheets, but sex is not intimacy and intimacy is something Jack hasn’t experienced in a very long time.

“Above all,” his boss tells him, “don’t make any friends.” The local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) knows a tortured soul when he sees one (“A priest sees everything”), and uses the language of sin and redemption to try to draw Jack out, but it is clear Jack finds himself beyond salvation. Or at least very nearly.

Clooney is riveting as the dour, taciturn Jack. He, and the film in which he appears, is a study in stillness and restraint. Clooney acts, not with his body or the dialogue (which is sparse and limited), but with his face, with his eyes. They tell a harrowing tale of agony and lament.

“I’m no good with machines,” Jack repeats several times throughout the film, a statement that we will come to see is demonstrably false. If anything, Jack is a machine — fulfilling his purpose without prejudice or sentiment, precise to the point of anal retentiveness, unfeeling, a robot.

Gorgeously painterly, suffused with exquisite formality and commendable control, “The American” is also bathed the sort of slow burn, stomach twisting dread that starts at the beginning of the film but doesn’t find release until the very end.

Corbijn doesn’t feel the need for throwaway humor or over-the-top action set pieces — his film, made with decidedly European sensibilities, is an understated character study of a man wrestling with his life’s choices.

“You are an American,” Jack is told early on, “You think you can escape history.”

Those words, both in their immediate and larger sense, will be ringing in your ears as the final frame of film fades to black.

THE AMERICAN

Directed by: Anton Corbijn

Starring: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli, Bruce Altman

Theaters: Chapel Hills, Cinemark, Hollywood, Tinseltown

Rated: R (for violence, sexual content and nudity)

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

GRADE: B+