Nobody. You must have missed the part where Clooney took the rifle back out of the briefcase. I picked up on what he was up to right away. He knew the shooter was going to try to hit him, so he plugged the barrel and the weapon blew up in her face.
I had no problem figuring out who the bad guys were, but part of the movie was the intrigue, where you have to try to figure it out for yourself. I prefer this sort of writing, because I don’t like in-your-face screenplays.
Any hunting rifle would have done just fine, but then you wouldn’t have much of a movie, would you? It was part of the plotline. Any more involved characer development would have made this thing three hours long, and since you’re bitching about how slow it was. . .
Clooney figured out something was up and rigged the gun to shoot the shooter, so basically, she shot herself in the eye, right through the head…which is probably what most of the audience wished they could do about then as well.
Actually I didn’t say anything about the pacing or how slow it was (but I agree it was). But I disagree with your premise that it would have added time to the movie. Those scenes could have easily been added into any one of the numerous minutes long shots of Clooney just sitting looking pensive or whatever he was trying to convey.
Regarding the rifle being the plot - that’s a very thin plot-line, imho.
Oh, I see what you’re getting at. I think it was just a “hits for hire” outfit. Who they were working for really didn’t matter, but what they did for a living was. We saw the film with another couple; it’s interesting that the two guys liked the movie, the two gals hated it. It wasn’t a great film by any stretch, but I’m not getting all the vitriol over it.
I posted that as soon as got in last night and after a couple of drinks. Yeah, I probably went overboard with the vitriol but I was pretty embarrassed at having drug two friends to this movie. I know every movie can’t be great but Clooney is an accomplished actor, director and producer. If it’s his mug that’s putting my ass in a theater seat, I expect much better than this.
I would infer from his review that anyone expecting an action movie would be disappointed. In this regard I think the trailer is misleading. Ebert describes the movie as a character study with Clooney as a modern Samurai. It doesn’t sound like a Friday night movie at all. It sounds more like a wait for it to show up on Netflix movie.
I think the intent was for the rifle to be used for a different purpose than it was in the end; i.e., something else got in the way initially, so they used the rifle for something in addition to it’s original purpose which I assume was for an assassination. I like that they didn’t say which “side” the bad guys were on, if they were on a side at all.
It was full of cliche’s though, which was the one bad thing for me.
Thanks for the link Joel. Reading that, it seems we watched two different movies. He gets several points wrong - for example RE states that “he “serves” Pavel, because he accepts his commands without question, giving him a samurai’s loyalty”. Actually when Pavel asks him to do this job Jack (Clooney’s character) says something like ‘I’ll think about it’. Considering how Ebert thinks this movie is so exacting this is a big difference. In another scene Jack deliberately disobeys Pavel when he goes to another town to wait for instructions.
Ebert: “Jack or Edward lives alone, does push-ups, drinks coffee in cafes, assembles the weapon. And so on.”
In this climate of film these days of Bourne, et al doing a few push ups doesn’t seem to be the kind of training that would turn one into a super assassin we see him to be in the films first scene.
And that “and so on” is the killer. It entails long shots of Jack doing nothing except staring into space. One good scene of this is enough to tell us he’s a deep thinker. Lots of those scenes tell us he’s stoned… or this is bad film making.
Ebert: “We know from the film’s shocking opening scene that people want to kill him.” " He finds people beginning to follow him and try to kill him." “Clara, the prostitute, should not be trusted.” “In his business he cannot trust anybody.” That and the fact that he murders an innocent woman in the film’s first scene -just in case - tell us he’s cautious or paranoid. Yet the priest shows up out of nowhere when the plot calls for it and Jack doesn’t question this at all. Even though it is revealed that the priest is less than a good man.
Ebert: “The director is a Dutchman named Anton Corbijn, known to me for “Control” (2007), the story of Ian Curtis, lead singer of Joy Division, a suicide at 23.** Corbin has otherwise made mostly music videos.**”
Here the irony run deep. This is the worst score for a movie I’ve heard in a long time. It’s very seventies.
Ebert; ““The American” allows George Clooney to play a man as starkly defined as a samurai. His fatal flaw, as it must be for any samurai, is love.”
First of all, no. His “love” for the prostitute in no way causes his demise. The people trying to kill him (for god only knows what reason) is the reason he is in danger - not his relationship with the whore.
Two movies I could compare The American with are Ghost Dog and The Matador. In Ghost Dog (another modern samurai flick) we learn who is his master (the mob), why he is serves them (they saved him from a racial beating), where he gets his inspiration (Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai - among other books) and we get to see him training with weapons he will actually use. So even though he is not a “good” guy in the traditional sense because we know his backstory we can empathize with him and care what happens to him. The only thing we know about Jack is that he ruthlessly kills an innocent who cares for him in the first scene because he doesn’t trust anyone. When Jack dies in the end all I can think is, good no more innocent people will die because of him.
And again in The Matador we have lots of backstory so we can care about this assassin.
I was not disappointed because it wasn’t an action film, I was disappointed because the script was bad as was the acting and production.
I enjoyed it. Although, the rest of my theater seemed to universally hate it. As angry as they were at the film I was surprised not one person left.
I couldn’t tell if his boss was trying to kill him from the start. Or, if the gun was originally made for another job, and was repurposed to take him out. Since I am not sure about that. I am also not sure if Clooney disabled the gun to quit early, under the pressure of the priest’s warnings, or if he was protecting himself.
But, yeah, the hooker with a heart of gold while super hot was really the weakest part of the film.
Having bought the idea that The American was a Bourne-esq thriller, I combined this with perhaps the most ironic back to back viewing: The Expendables. TE was so shallow it was hard to see on edge, and TA was so self consciously arty that I still can’t tell what the actual point is supposed to be.
TE is summarized as “older tough guys kick the butt of local bad guy military group. Satisfaction all around as cliched woman in distress is rescued and regime is toppled, but even fights between actual professional fighters are cut to one move at a time, and there’s so much fighting that you have trouble keeping track of any actual story.”
TA for me was “director wants to be seen as deep and European, and is so concerned with communicating loneliness that actual plot pacing or even conclusion are left behind.”
I cannot tell what the point of TA is. Is it supposed to be something depressingly French, like, “Life is crap. People make bad decisions. They pay for them. Disappointment is universal. [Grind cigarette on pavement, exit]”? I mean, there was precious little actual plot. There was only tension, not actual intrigue. In the Bourne films, you can feel yourself trying to figure things out with him, and there’s a logic to the way things are done, and satisfaction at having mysteries figured out.
So, Jack is willing to kill his girlfriend even though he tells someone later she was not at fault for his getting attacked. Why? He builds a rifle almost from scratch. Why? He meets a hooker. How? (I may have dozed off during that part, honestly.) What am I to take away from his dying at the end?
I know this is a very (ironically) American outlook, probably, but why am I supposed to like this? The bad guy didn’t get caught (mostly), the couple lost their love, there was little mystery revealed… Maybe I want everything handed to me, or only watch movies that make me feel good, but I don’t know what the point was. Has Jack found his real love, but had his bad previous life come back to bite him too hard? Is this a morality play about people who treat life with disdain and have it come back on them?
Because as a “normal” person she will tell the police, friends, etc. about it and they will look into the background of Clooney’s character and his associates. Once he is outed his life is in danger from both his friends( who he can rat out) and his enemies.
He is being paid to do so. The gun needs to fit into a briefcase and be relatively silent, so it is cutom built.
It’s hard *not * to meet a hooker. He goes to ger so he can have sex without there being a relationship like there was before where he eneded up having to kill her.
Not an action/adventure/spy thriller but a great character study. Clooney’s character is past the point where he can stand living alone, but that makes him too risky to trust.
Jack is an expert as an assassin and mechanic, not a superhero a la Bourne. The nature of his job requires that he be a loner, and hyper-alert (is it paranoid if they are actually trying to kill you?).
But in the opening scene it’s clear that he cares for the woman with whom he’s sharing the cabin in Sweden. If it’s not clear, note that he has nightmares about having killed her. Soon after arriving in Abruzzo he visits a brothel, but ends up developing a relationship with the prostitute.
Clearly he’s not being as careful as is necessary in his profession (note also how quickly the Priest figures out that he’s not who he says he is), therefore Pavel wants him killed.
Jack suspects this, but is not sure – therefore his paranoia is heightened. He doesn’t take the room in the town Pavel sends him to, he rents a room in the next town over. He’s suspicious of anyone in the street who so much as looks at him. He almost turns on Clara when he finds that she carries a gun in her purse.
Ultimately these two aspects of his personality (his need for human connection and his paranoia) would lead to his doom even if the hired assassins don’t get him…
I’m not going to see that movie… however PlainJane, would you mind sharing more of the MST3K comments… because I can think of no better way for this movie to be completely spoiled!
“(Clooney’s character) is one of those people who can assemble mechanical parts by feel and instinct, so inborn is his skill. His job is creating specialized weapons for specialized murders.”
And what better place to do this than a small Italian town where you’ve got to borrow tools/parts from a rundown auto repair shop, and you’re right on top of your neighbors so you have to wait for the church bells to ring so you can make banging noises without being detected.* Maybe ol’ Jack should have gone to Milan and rented a garage.**
*I think someone borrowed this idea from The Great Escape.
** They could have borrowed this idea from The Day Of The Jackal.
You know who does a great job with scenes of complete silence driving for interminable amounts of movie time? Vincent Gallo. He’s the king of silent driving scenes that just go on forever.
I guess that was the big controversial scene in ‘‘Brown Bunny’’ everyone was talking about. All the silent driving.