The American is a thriller that prefers the precision of a sniper rifle to the anarchic splatters of stray bullets. I didn’t try, but I’d imagine you could count the rounds fired during the film on your fingers and toes. Unlike most pairings of firearms and film, each shot matters here, and nearly as much for director Anton Corbijn’s lens as for the film’s gunslingers. George Clooney plays Jack — or Edward or Butterfly, depending on how much he trusts you — an American assassin and small-arms dealer working in Europe and longing, we eventually infer, to be able to embrace the elements in life that his profession necessitates he distance himself from: nature, conversation, friendship, and, of course, meaningful relationships with beautiful foreign women. Corbijn provides only as much information as we need, with no unnecessary plot entanglements or backstory, still managing to create a film of emotional poignancy and even complexity.
As if working with a sniper’s scope, the camera nearly always operates from a fixed vantage and often from the higher ground. I guess snipers must have a lot of patience, and Corbijn does, too, content to show us trees, aerial shots of rural Italy’s geography, and hillside villages while he waits for the film’s few targets to enter his field of view. Corbijn was a photographer, and each shot’s composition demonstrates an appreciation of aesthetics on their own terms that’s more common to still images than narrative. But the beauty isn’t self-indulgent; it shows us what Jack, who tells people he’s a travel photographer and no doubt wishes he actually were, would rather be focused on.
I can’t say I blame him. Corbijn makes no effort to show distaste for Jack’s profession, which would be too easy. Instead, he makes Jack’s fantasy alternative seem immensely appealing, seemingly tangible yet always quickly vanishing. As the film begins, Jack is living in a cabin with his romantic interest Ingrid (Irina Bjӧrklund). When they’re shot at during a romantic walk through the snowy landscape, Jack quickly pulls a gun and takes care of their would-be assassin, much to Ingrid’s surprise. To ours, Jack takes care of Ingrid, too, perhaps to protect his cover or perhaps to protect her from inevitable interrogation.
He flees to a rural Italian village after contacting his boss, and takes on what he decides will be his last assignment: constructing a nearly-impossible weapon out of scratch. While there, he strikes up an almost friendship with a priest, searches out parts for his project (the construction of which Corbijn pays careful attention to), tells his boss he “wants out,” and stays alert for hitmen, whether friends of the assassins he just murdered or of his own untrustworthy boss. He also meets a high-class hooker named Clara (Violante Placido) and, despite his resistance, falls for her. One of their dates in particular masterfully and subtly shows us just how hard it is out there for a hitman, as Jack just can’t relax and let down his nerve, even (and especially) with the adoring and beautiful Clara naked on their picnic spread. I won’t give any spoilers, but Jack does finally let his guard down (and attempt to atone for Ingrid, or at least make peace with himself) in a satisfyingly tense finale.
For a thriller about an American assassin and small-arms dealer killing people abroad for profit, you wouldn’t expect the controversy over The American to be over its aesthetics. Yet it’s been heavily criticized as a piece of “style over substance.” The New Yorker’s Richard Brody even claimed the film was over for him from the very start, after a briskly cut scene early on provided style, but withheld information. I suppose it’s a good sign that critics can accept that a foreigner like Dutch director Anton Corbijn might be using moving pictures to question US foreign policy — we’ve come a long way since Akira Kurosawa’s Rhapsody in August was panned for its supposed anti-Americanism in dealing with Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But more likely is the fact that they just didn’t notice: the metaphor in The American is so subtle it might not even exist, Corbijn much preferring gorgeous yet functional shots of trees, women, and landscapes to prosthelytizing about the political.
