The American (Anton Corbijn, 2010) - 3½ stars

The American is a well-devised slow boiling thriller that almost pays off but just misses out on being a glorious work of art.

Clooney’s title character, also known as Jack, Edward, Mr. Butterfly and, in Martin Booth’s source novel, referred to as a very private gentleman, is a lone assassin, having some down time in rural Italy after a job-scare in Sweden. It is a moody, well paced and balanced character piece, looking at a hit man coming to the end of his career, and committing two of the biggest assassin faux pas: falling in love and allowing somebody to find out your real identity.

Towards the end of the opening credits, the camera stays on Clooney for an extended period as he drives through a long tunnel, when we are finally blinded by the sun. This long take is used by director Anton Corbijn to tell us we are not watching a fast paced action film. This is not The Bourne Clooney. With beautifully framed, but static, shots, a scarce score and even scarcer dialogue, tension builds from the beginning, and keeps doing so until the end, allowing us to learn a depth to the character that we are often not privy to in such genre films.

However, this tension and depth can only be fully realised with a wholly rewarding ending, which unfortunately we are not given. While Clooney gets caught in bluffs and double crosses, the film gets caught in itself, and does not fully release the tension that has built for nearly two hours, leaving us walking away feeling slightly cheated. If the payoff had been better, we could accept the slowness right up to the end credits, but without such a result, it just feels sluggish by the fourth quarter, like we’ve seen it all before.

So, as the action thriller we are promised, or maybe just wishing for, it disappoints slightly, but as a character study and a career move for Clooney, it is spot on. For this is not Clooney as we know him. He is not cheekily in charge. He has not got all the angles. Writing this with two years hindsight, I can almost liken Clooney’s performance and the film’s overall knowing of what it wants to Nicholas Winding Refn’s 2011 offering Drive. Since The American, Clooney has taken a leap of faith, starring as broken and vulnerable in Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (2011) In The American, Clooney is not only serious, but he is stone-faced, abrasive and occasionally on the back foot.

As for Corbijn, he certainly knows how to orchestrate the elements of a film to create what he wants. Not for a long time have I seen a film’s components work in such unison to create character and story. He knows that fundamentally, directing means decision-making and you can see his implicit decisions everywhere you look. From the colour and costume to the openness of the sexual encounters, Corbijn has his signature all over the little things, suggesting none of this has happened by chance.

Overall, a tour de force for Clooney and Corbijn alike, but do not be fooled by the title. This is not another American spy film. It aims for, and for the most part achieves, something more, which makes it almost worth the work.