Synopsis
Dispatched to a small Italian town to await further orders, assassin Jack embarks on a double life that may be more relaxing than is good for him.
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Cast
- George ClooneyJack / Edward
- Violante PlacidoClara
- Thekla ReutenMathilde
- Paolo BonacelliFather Benedetto
- Johan LeysenPavel
- Irina BjörklundIngrid
- Lars HjelmHunter #1
- Björn GranathHunter #2
- Giorgio GobbiMan on Vespa
- Silvana BosiOld Cheese Vendor
Recommendations
- 100
Chicago Sun-Times
Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in "Le Samourai," by Jean-Pierre Melville. - 80
New York Daily News
The American, a movie as coiled as a snake and as still as a sleepy villa, is the rare grownup thriller that knows the link between peace and danger and the tension that comes from both. - 75
Orlando Sentinel
Crisp, compact and cryptic, The American is a standard-issue hit-man thriller tailor made for George Clooney. - 75
Miami Herald
Corbijn makes the familiar strange, focusing on details other filmmakers would gloss over. - 63
Chicago Tribune
The movie is a paradox. It's ostentatiously restrained. You cannot say Corbijn lacks rigor. You can, however, say that when a talented director's approach too precisely mirrors the tightly calibrated performance strategy of his leading player, a movie risks stalling out completely. - 60
The New York Times
It is a reasonably skillful exercise in genre and style, a well-made vessel containing nothing in particular, though some of its features - European setting, slow pacing, full-frontal female nudity - are more evocative of the art house than of the multiplex. - 50
The Hollywood Reporter
Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so. - 50
Entertainment Weekly
The role requires Clooney to dial down his charm to nearly zero, and frankly, he looks twitchy and uncomfortable without it.
