Eye Candy #500 - "The American"

The American:  George Clooney is Jack, an emotionally distant assassin and armorer who goes to ground in the Abruzzo region of Italy.  While laying low, he takes a job building a custom sniper rifle for a mysterious woman, while romancing a local prostitute. Carla, and befriending the local priest.  Soon, however, Jack’s healthy paranoia isn’t just paranoia, and there are indeed men on the ground in Abruzzo out to kill Jack, all while Jack is finding things to believe in again, as Carla gives him love and a way out of his lifestyle.  Clooney here is very much against type and pretty much the whole show (there are only six speaking parts in the entire movie).  His standard glib jokester is gone, as Jack is a haunted, quiet man, a stone-cold killer that is willing to make the hard decisions like executing those that have gotten close to him and may compromise him without a moment‘s hesitation.  That emotional detachment makes it awful hard to care about him,  like Jack’s own dramatic arc, to the point that Jack’s own realization at the tail-end of the movie comes too late to redeem him dramatically or in the eyes of the audience: he is aloof from start to finish.  Technically fine, with no outstanding flourishes.  The beautiful setting does most of the work for the director.  All he has to do is point and shoot.  This is only the second dramatic film from director Anton Corbijn.  Worth a look, but not any great shakes.  Woodchuck sez, “Might be up your alley.”