03 December 2012

The American (Anton Corbijn, 2010)

6/10
Been wanting to see this one for a while. Hollywood goes Slow? I'm in. Well, director Anton Corbijn has a good eye for visuals, impressively filming beautiful landscapes in Sweden and Italy, but as a director, his style seems lacking. Witness Nicolas Winding Refn doing a similar thing much better a few years later with Drive. Heck, even Jim Jarmusch did it better a year earlier with The Limits of Control. Also, both those movies had fantastic soundtracks, something which I thought really let down The American (strange, given Corbijn's history as a music video director and his previous feature on Joy Division).
Finally, I just didn't buy George Clooney in the role of a cold-blooded killer, no matter how hard he set his jaw. With his cocktail party looks and dark brown sweaters, it was a poor fit from day one, though I can see why he would want to try the role.
So it didn't really come together for me, but I can see what Corbijn was aiming for. I think it was an interesting effort if not a success.

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