Blu-Ray Review: Meditative, Excellent ‘The American’ With George Clooney

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CHICAGO – A movie that comes closer to the lyrical and meditative style of Michelangelo Antonioni than any other in years, Anton Corbijn’s “The American,” now on Blu-ray and DVD, is a nearly-brilliant drama that found a respectable audience in theaters even if it wasn’t quite the right one.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

Universal/Focus sold the film as an action-packed thriller, a variation on the Jason Bourne trilogy, and ended up with over $35 million, a number that would have been impossible if the movie has been presented as the philosophical art house gem that it truly is. Audiences in the multiplex may have been pissed that the film has more bare breasts than gun shots but the tragedy is that discerning movie goers may have written it off as escapist fare. It’s not. It’s complex, daring stuff with one of George Clooney’s best performances. Do yourself a favor and catch up to “The American,” Pat McDonald’s runner-up for the best film of 2010.

The American was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on December 28th, 2010.
Photo credit: Universal Home Video

The son of the legendary director Roland Joffe, Rowan Joffe, worked from the book “A Very Private Gentleman” by Martin Booth to craft an exercise in somber precision. This is yet another film about a man trying to escape a profession that doesn’t have a retirement plan but it does so in a very melancholic way, almost as if the battle of the hitman to figure out the final chapter of his life is not unlike the dilemma we all face as we entire the dusk of our lives.

The American was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on December 28th, 2010. Photo credit: Universal Home Video

Clooney plays the title character, a fellow named Jack who, after a failed execution attempt, hides out in a small Italian city trying to figure out who burned him while taking on one more job. While Jack’s shady contact ostensibly tries to get to the bottom of the attempt on Jack’s life, he gives him an assignment and we learn that the American builds high-powered weapons. His contact, Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) – in a great, subtle detail about the shifting sands on which Jack stands, we meet Mathilde three times as a blonde, brunette, and redhead – asks Jack to build a semi-automatic weapon with the range of a rifle and a silencer. Only Jack can do it. But why? And how can he stay alive long enough to do so?

Jack spends his days crafting the weapon and, not unintentionally, befriends two characters who clearly symbolize what men look for through major portions of their life — a Priest (Paolo Bonacelli) and a prostitute (Violante Placido). It may sound cliched, but part of the genius of Corbijn’s film is about how casually these clearly-symbolic characters and moments are represented. “The American” never underlines its meaning, allowing it to work on different levels for different viewers.

With almost no dialogue, Corbijn, Joffe, and Clooney convey what is the story of a very, very sad man reaching for some kind of small happiness that has always evaded him. He is the type of man who has claimed for years that contact and the happiness it brings was unessential and may be realizing too late that he lied to himself. Clooney, doing some of the best work of his career, brilliantly plays a man with such a deep well of sadness inside that when he seems honestly moved by the beauty of a butterfly on a girl’s shoulder it’s almost as if he’s feeling something for the first time. Corbijn uses one of our few true movie stars perfectly, allowing him to sink into the tapestry of the work he’s creating; a film that feels more like a 1968 foreign film than a 2010 work starring an Oscar winner. No wonder Universal had no idea how to market it.

Blu-ray and DVD are the great equalizer. Great films simply don’t disappear. Typically through word-of-mouth, they find the audience they deserve. “The American” will surely do the same.

Special Features:
o Digital Copy
o PocketBlu
o BD-Live
o Deleted Scenes
o Journey to Redemption: The Making of The American
o Feature Commentary With Director Anton Corbijn

By BRIAN TALLERICO Content Director HollywoodChicago.com brian@hollywoodchicago.com