Killshot: A Review of 'The American'

There’s a great deal of pleasure to be taken in craftsmanship alone, especially when it is both precise and concise. In The American, George Clooney plays the titular countryman Jack (not his real name), hiding out in a sleepy Italian village, who applies his considerable technique to constructing a weapon for an assassination. His own quiet commitment is echoed by director Anton Corbijn, who treats the film as though he were planning an understated death-act of his own.

Meticulous but involving, The American finds a way to work firmly within genre boundaries without being ‘generic’. It’s one of those films “they don’t make anymore”, but the ideological implications of it suggest there may be more on the way. Jack works with his hands on tactile material to produce a one-of-a-kind tool that rates as a work of art; he is also besieged by suspicions and shady characters. America, once coloniser of the European unconscious (a phrase I borrow from German filmmaker Wim Wenders, whose work is also echoed here), is now relegated to isolationist artist whose labour will be abused by those controlling him: it is the world of earlier Clooney film The Good German inverted for the twenty-first century. In a time of collapsing money markets, only physical objects can be invested with meaning, but even these can be put to unintended uses.

With its invocations of a gothic hell-on-earth for the emotionally tormented it is also reminiscent of In Bruges, but without the jokes (the presence of Thekla Reuten, the love interest from Martin McDonagh’s comedy, only aids the feelings of familiarity). It is also any movie about hit men who themselves become targets. But despite this, the film avoids a mythic quality, even as it toys with pseudo-poetic images of butterflies and intertextual references to Sergio Leone (Once Upon a Time in the West plays in the background, although a closer narrative model would have to be High Noon).

Promisingly, Clooney’s is the only name most people will recognise from the opening credits, and this sense of his alienation amongst a population he does not understand (the language barrier is symptomatic of a more existential gulf between Jack and everyone else) adds to a sense of claustrophobia which is potent despite all the sweeping scenery. Corbijn even finds a few ways of filming his star in an original way, which for a face as overexposed as Clooney’s (did someone say Nespresso?) is quite an achievement. He also has an eye for the details: shoes being removed before a foot chase, a restaurant bill paid even in the midst of incredible tension.

Rich in allegorical potential, if not potent allegory, The American is a film to slowly relish rather than greedily consume. Closer to the work of Graham Greene than a modern airport novel, it is satisfying and sly, and feels a lot more contemporary than any fiction that might offer America as the centre of gravity and Europe as anything other than a treacherous hinterland of precarious stability.

Public Speaking: A Review of 'Michael Clayton'

In Michael Clayton the eponymous ‘fixer’ at a prestigious law firm based in New York begins to see his world crumble, an old friend having slipped off into the deep end thanks either to the crushing weight of his sins of silence or having gone off his meds.   Clayton, played by George Clooney, is having a hard enough time as it is, debts up to his eyeballs and a family circle that veers between judgemental and drug-addled. His attempts to hold his own life together form the core of what we observe on screen, but the film keeps pulling away, visualising moments of bizarre pathological hysteria, seen as the consequence of an unpleasant corporate world that surrounds and bleeds into everything.

At no point do we see any of the victims of the deadly toxins to be found in the fertiliser pedalled by bulletproof corporation U/north. The story takes place in boardrooms, restaurants, hotel rooms, and other people’s living rooms. While evoking Erin Brockovich in plot, Clayton keeps away from the collateral damage caused by his law firm and their clients – fellow attorney Arthur Edens (Tom Wilkinson) has connected with the poor souls, and the result is more than moral realignment: it is a total psychotic break.  Wilkinson’s performance in this role is both grandstanding and convincing, his opening monologue – set to images of an empty law office – is an incredible piece of cinema, quietly compelling in its compulsive mania.

Yet writer-director Tony Gilroy does not preach like a man possessed; rather, he films like a methodical, enormously capable, brittle first-timer – like the character of Karen Crowder, a legal professional within U/north who is completely out of her depth.  Moments where we see her carefully arrange her clothes for a business meeting, or obsessively rehearse answers to a forthcoming Q&A session make far more of an impact than Clayton’s debt-problems or broken family.   His afflictions are temporary, and will either get solved or be his downfall by film’s end; Crowder’s quest for a permanent suitability is a far deeper, more horrifying suffering that cannot be admitted, let alone corrected in two easy hours.  When her character is forced to decide whether to end a life for the sake of her job, Michael Clayton finds the sting in its tale: this is not a story about the ethical lapse of doing nothing while evil is in your midst, its about the temptation to choose evil because it is what is expected of you.

The film is structured around a series of displays of intent, beginning with Eden’s frenzied explanation of his motives, a speech in which Clayton is addressed and examined, but not seen – when the story finds him a few minutes later he is revealed like just another cog in the machine: how could he possibly deserve the honour of Eden’s confession? We perhaps expect the film to show us how he becomes worthy, but in a sly joke the opening scenes are a flash-forward, the Clayton sitting at the poker table already having heard the rousing call to arms of Eden; and yet, there he sits.   The finale, too, plays games with the preparation and delivery of vital information and audiences in and out of sight.

Gilroy’s direction is crisp and exciting, occasionally unfolding events and motivations in wordless passages of surprising weight and tension.       His script is intelligent and polished, but for me contained one too many leftovers from his work on the Bourne series, assassinations shown that, for all their effectiveness, should have been concealed.  The best writing comes in the true-to-life moments like a father insisting to his son that he is better than both his father and the people his father hangs around with, or the frustration felt between friends when one betrays another.  A shame, then, that the tale is so well-worn, resembling Soderbergh’s aforementioned work, as well as Clooney’s recent Syriana, and any number of seventies thrillers starting with The Days of the Condor.

A surprisingly strong showing in 2008’s Oscar nominations will hopefully bring the film to a wide audience, which Swindon’s performance particularly deserves.  The whole work will, I suspect, reward further study, and indicates the proper introduction of a mature and disciplined presence behind the camera.