"The American", Clooney is the strong, silent archetype.  The silent killer whose professional life exacts a toll on his spirit. He wants to leave behind his life of violence and drifting - and to find the kind of human connection that his temperament and his job have denied him up to now. In his quest. in addition to a priest, he befriends Clara, a prostitute who is so stirred by his bedroom prowess that she stops charging him and asks him out for dinner instead. (Some guys get all the breaks.) 

A good deal of "The American" directed by Anton Corbijn from a script by Rowan Joffe (adapted from the novel "A Very Private Gentleman," by Martin Booth), is devoted to the patient examination of Mr. Butterfly at work. He plies his trade with meticulous care, weighing, measuring, disassembling and tweaking his special gun with artisanal devotion. And the virtues of the film itself are those of craft rather than art. Its precision is impressive... It is a reasonably skillful exercise in genre and style, a well-made vessel...though some of its features " European setting, slow pacing, full-frontal female nudity " are more evocative of the art house than of the multiplex. 

Mr. Corbijn, a photographer who turned to filmmaking with "Control," his moody and measured biography of Ian Curtis, lead singer of the Manchester post-punk band Joy Division, has an eye for natural beauty and a practiced sense of composition. Frame by frame " eagle-eye views of red-tile roofs and glimpses down narrow stone passageways; sex scenes and shots of Mr. Clooney glumly drinking coffee"  "The American" is never less than gorgeous. And the oblique approach it takes to what is a fairly standard plot creates a mood of suspense quickened by the accelerated heartbeat of Herbert Gr?nemeyer?s unobtrusive music. 

A quiet, brooding sense of menace settles in right at the beginning, which finds Mr. Clooney, his silver hair complemented by a snowy beard, rusticating in the snowy Swedish countryside. His idyll is disrupted by homicide, and with the help of a sinister gentleman named Pavel (Johan Leysen), our newly clean-shaven American settles in Italy. 

In addition to the priest, he befriends Clara, a prostitute "played by an actress with the splendidly oxymoronic name Violante Placido"  who is so stirred by his bedroom prowess that she stops charging him and asks him out for dinner instead. (Some guys get all the breaks.) Meanwhile his business dealings with his client carry a sexual undercurrent that the American may or may not notice. 

It is, in general, hard to fathom what he sees or thinks, which is both the point and a bit of a problem. Jack, or Edward, or Butterfly (he?s called that because of a tattoo between his shoulder blades and also because of a more mysterious totemic connection to the insect) is a familiar enough movie type. He?s the lone gunslinger, the masterless samurai, the silent killer whose professional life exacts a toll on his spirit. He wants to leave behind his life of violence and drifting "I?m out",  he says at one point, in case we were wondering - and to find the kind of human connection that his temperament and his job have denied him up to now. 

This kind of character tends to be a man of few words: Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Robert Redford in the 1970s, Alan Ladd in "Shane" Mr. Clooney?s gravelly whisper and diffident, ironical air make him a natural heir to the tradition, and many of his roles " in "Syriana" in "Michael Clayton" and even last year in "Up in the Air" ? are variations on the strong, silent archetype. "The American",  filtering out any mention of the character?s history and suppressing all but the tiniest indications of emotion, tries to strip the man to his essence....

?The American"  is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). Sex and violence, crafty and artful. 

http://movies.nytimes.com/2010/09/01/movies/01american.html
 

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