Friday, December 24, 2010

THE AMERICAN (2010)

It seems that Director Anton Corbijn is highly influenced by Jean Pierre Melville’s classic minimalist noir ‘Le Samourai’ starring mysterious and dashing professional assassin Alain Delon, here played by Hollywood’s gentleman star-actor George Clooney. He’s assigned professional who assembles and makes specialized assassin weapons for his patron’s clients. He is a professional who doesn’t pay heed to anything else than his assigned task and keeps all-time alert about his presence. There’s a stranger who follows him, a woman who called him ‘Mr. Butterfly’ and a prostitute with great body and like most men his only flaw lies in love.

Perhaps many of you won’t like this one, especially if you’ve not seen Melville’s stylish and minimalist film. Mind well it’s not routine assassin thriller. It’s slow, it’s stylish, it’s more frames and less dialogue and no background score and negligible plot. Corbjin successfully brought the rare touch of minimalism, quite a rarity in today’s commercial Hollywood but he ended it without giving us enough jolts or element of unpredictability. Clooney is fine but he seems too dry and serious compared to awesome Delon. The fine reason to watch once is it’s stunning cinematography portraying a remote hilly village in nature’s lap of Italy with fine extreme wide shots and aerial angles.

Recommend it to those who’ve seen Melville film and it’s another brilliant inspired version ‘Ghost Dog: The way of the Samurai’ made by Jim Jarsmusch starring awesome Forrest Whitaker.

Ratings-6.5/10

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