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This movie is so serious about its pretensions that none of it makes any sense.
While cinema-lovers can cheer a director willing to buck the fashion for sensory overload, The American can't rightly be called a success.
The good news, though, is that eventually The American does get to where it wants to be, and becomes a rather improbably but genuinely moving story.
Clooney channels Delon, Belmondo and Bronson in the highly atmospheric 'The American,' an acquired taste that, once tasted, is easily savored
If you're expecting a star-propelled thriller with the usual bob, weave and one-two punch, this isn't your ticket.
Early on, the priest explains to Jack, 'You have the hands of a craftsman, not an artist.' The American is the product of such hands as well: lovely in execution, if somewhat wanting in inspiration.
It may not be the fast-paced assassin thriller you might expect, but it benefits more from that than anything else.
When the story is threadbare and the picture lacks dynamism, all that's left is the character study but Corbijn's technique frustrates any attempt to truly get under Jack's skin. Consequently The American is often as non-descript as its title.
An arty Euro thriller that favours style over excitement and character over plot.
suggests that we've lost everything but our desire to be better--and in the end, it lets us decide whether that's good enough.
If you want to see a carefully paced, well-designed and beautifully shot suspense-thriller that hits all of its marks, then you could do far worse than The American.
... for audiences that prefer to be absorbed by films rather than exhausted by them, The American offers a rare experience.
The camera loves Clooney, of course, but it also loves watching him building a custom rifle in his shop...
For all of its precise direction and beautiful imagery, it's a classic genre picture, and a damn good one at that...
Listless Euro-ennui pastiche
While it feels like nothing much is happening, there's a lot going on under the surface, and a real sense of growing suspense.
There's a lot to value, even if it drinks a little too deeply from the well of stock Euro-assassin-movie characters and situations.
Sparse, tense, beautiful... and strangely empty. The dialogue, plot and characterisation are nowhere near as deep or profound as the filmmakers seem to think they are.
A muted thriller, weighed a little too obviously with existential angst. Still, sexy and tense, with a brave, bare performance from Clooney.
Partway between icy existentialism and retro romantic thriller, The American wants to have its cake and eat it.
It purrs evenly, like the engine of a luxury automobile, with a cool, sleek satisfaction at how stylish it is. That said, it is pretty stylish...
As with watching the equally compact, detached Cary Grant, it's a great pleasure just to see the stone-faced Clooney going about his work exuding mystery and inner torment...
At its best, the film's silence and unrevealing mood of observation remind you of 'The Passenger' or Paulo Sorrentino's 'Consequences of Love'...
The greatest singular joy of The American is the fact that it's less complicated than Clooney's 2007 thriller Michael Clayton and we're never sure if George is going to explode into life.
The story is startlingly clichéd yet told in a pretentious and ponderous art-house style that suggests the filmmakers thought they were making something meaningful.
You've heard of action movies. The American is an inaction movie...
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