Our First Review- The American- Not a good start Rog!

Movie: The American
Staring: George Clooney; Violante Placido; Thekla Reuten; Johan Leysen
Director: Anton Corbijn

Ebert's Review- 4 Stars
Leo's Review- 2 Stars

Our first written Review for my blog is "The American" staring George Clooney. Clooney plays an American assassin named Jack or... Edward? Is one of these names his real name? That we do not know. We know he is trained at creating handmade weapons, planning the perfect kill, and making sure it all goes down without a sound. What he is clearly not trained at is how not to let love get in his way.

The movie is directed by Anton Corbijn, who had only directed the 2007 movie "Control" and a collection of Depeche Mode and Metallica videos prior. The movie starts in Sweden with a bang. We know nothing about our characters and already they are being followed, hunted.

Later, our assassin settles outside of Rome, which offered Corbjin an opportunity to display very beautiful cinematography of Clooney in a small town in Italy.  While hiding out in this isolated location, our assassin is being paid to deliver the perfect handmade weapon to his assigned contact.

While in this small town, our main character meets the local priest and they form a sort of friendship, but he remains an isolated man of mystery.  In order to relieve his loneliness, Jack/Edward visits a local bordello and meets a woman by the name of Clara (played by the beautiful Violante Placido).   As we focus on our single main character, we question the motives of others as he does: Can we trust Clara? Is she a killer? We wonder if she may be blinding Jack/Edward with her beauty and therefore, you can sense Clooney's need to escape, but will he still be able to stay focused on his purpose in Italy? The suspense of these questions builds to the climax, and if you welcome this type of dilemma in your movie going, this type of plot may be for you, moviegoers.

Roger Ebert and I did not see eye to eye on this film. Ebert gave it a rating of four stars. I gave it two. My ratings tend to be fence ratings, meaning it could be 2 ½ or 2 or 1 ½ stars if a few elements of the film would have been carried out differently. This movie for me is a SOLID 2 Stars. When I see a film, pace is a very important factor. This movie has a quick jolt in the start, but it is WAY too slow in the middle, only to try to grab you back for the big finale. By that time it arrived I was gone; it was too late. As I said, the beginning intrigued me, but there wasn't enough time spent developing the plot OR the characters.. After the opening scene we follow Clooney through Europe and basically see him driving, sitting in cafes', doing push-ups, and assembling his weapon. What is the purpose of all this? Get to the point right? I love spy, espionage style films, so i really just wanted more substance.

Being the action movie fan that I am maybe I was just impatient? But it was more than that.  I felt there had to be more to Clooney's character. I see him doing push-ups in his room, I see him assembling guns out of car parts. But I want to know how he got there and why he stays in a profession of assassin if he is so careless with the woman he falls for.

Ebert may be right in that he believes the director Corbijn constructed the movie the way Jack/Edward constructs a weapon stating,”It is so rare to see a film this carefully crafted, this patiently assembled like a weapon, that when the word comes it strikes like a clap of thunder. A lesser film would have underscored it with a shock chord, punctuated it with a sudden zoom, or cut to a shocked close up. "The American" is too cool to do that. Too Zen, if you will."

This is maybe why Ebert is more movie savvy than I am. He sees this part of the movie as the craft of the director and the art of how the movie is put together. The movie had coolness, to Ebert. I noticed the beautiful cinematography, the isolation of our main character, the fine crafted calculation of his profession. But I also felt for an assassin he certainly did not have much of a threat or even enough dialogue for me to care about the plot. Is his relationship with the small town priest important? Should an assassin be wasting his time with prostitutes? Even if they are gorgeous? I did not see it as much of a necessity for a man who is an assassin-a job where you are supposed to be fast and quick –to be wasting so much time. Maybe if he wanted to do what he was doing he would take his job more serious.

I agree with some of Ebert's points on this movie and maybe I am learning from him on a movie like this. I just know that he saw this movie as a well made craft stating that what the director had was, “There is not a wrong shot. Every performance is tightly controlled. Clooney is in complete command of his effect. He sometimes seems to be chewing a very small piece of gum, or perhaps his tongue." Command is what the director and Clooney have in this film. I just wish they would have commanded more dialogue and not have lost me in the middle with what I thought was a movie with potential.

 2 STARS

Read Roger's Review @ http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100831/REVIEWS/100839999