“The American” is Clooney’s 2nd Worst Movie

This year’s biggest spoof movie has to be “The American”, starring George Clooney, too bad it wasn’t meant to be comedy. First off it’s a modern spy/terrorist plot, yet modeled after a spaghetti western.

Remember those? The kind of movie made in Italy by directors with a totally weird, abstract vision of the wild west? The characters had short, but intense lines filled with drama, immediately followed by incredibly long lingering stares – shot close up by the camera so you could see every blink and wrinkle. And there was this music by Ennio Morricone who became famous for his work on Italian western films. The American tried to copy all and the music, but in a slightly more subtle fashion.

Too bad the spaghetti western theme didn’t work in this spy/terrorist whatever it was movie, that at least would have been some redeming value. Instead the “italian” artsy touch was a little overboard on this confusing and perhaps the dullest picture since “A Horse in Motion”.

“The American” was about 30 minutes of Italian scenery, 30 minutes of dead pan stares, 10 minutes of brief, short dead pan dialog, 6 minutes of mild action and I don’t know what happened to the other 30 minutes… I must have been dozing.

The plot was never clear, but that’s the point of Italian art films. You’re suppose to be left to guess…onlyt I hate that. I want to know who is who and whats up! Anyway, the movie involves Clooney, I’m guessing as a murder-for-hire, or an assassin or a spy, we’re never told which and it’s his last contract or caper or whatever. He’s hired to build a special death rifle for this sexy female assassin. She tries to make a little chemisty with Clooney, but he’s playing a sullen tall, dark stranger and he’s not going for whatever she’s offering.

She specifies this ultra weapon must be easily concealed and shoot like a submachine gun, but with a rifle cartridge. And what high-tech, exotic piece of lethal weaponry does Clooney come up with? Why it’s America’s favorite little plinker, a Ruger Mini-14. Whaa…a Ruger mini-14??? lol Now this is what makes no sense at all. Consier these are internalists, plugged in to whats happening and doing their dark business. They must know there are arms bazaars all over North Africa, the Middle East and all the way up to Pakistan where anyone with a hundred dollar bill can buy almost any sort of military assault weapon. Why are these people paying George a huge wad of cash to supply a rifle that anyone could buy at your local Big 5 store? Okay, so now this becomes another laughable part. Totally rediculous plot line.

The director should have at least asked for a high tech weapon such as an Israeli Gallil or a British Bullpup…they must have spent too much cash hiring Clooney.

There is one other huge flaw in movie and it doesn’t come until the end, but it’s so blatantly obvious its funny, and I’m tempted to tell you. Okay, wanna hear it? It won’t totally spoil the ending. The person sent to kill Clooney is killed by a booby-trapped rife that fires backwards when the trigger is pulled. Then the shooter dies from a shot right through ol’ sighting eye. Clever? Not at all….because a scope can’t shoot! A scope is a telescope you can see right through, clear glass at either end. How do you rig a bullet that can’t be seen and can be fired right back at your eyeball in a scope? Absurd..totally absurd, the directors or writers must never have handled a rifle.

Not to be a picker of too small of nits, but if this weapon really did fire backward then it’s the bolt that would have been blown backwards and this would have hit the person’s cheek, not the eye. Oh yeah, and the person shot through the eyeball (and presumably the brain) then falls 60 feet off a high roof and actually lives for a few moments while Clooney rushes over and tries to get some answers from the not yet dead assassin!

This next part is just my own hang-up, but ever since I found out Clooney is short, around 5-6, I’ve noticed the camera angles that are all done to make him look more average sized. Finding a female actress much shorter than Clooney can’t be easy. Most starlets today are over 5-9. His movie girlfriend is clearly 5-6 inches shorter than he. This is why I think his prostitute-girlfriend must have been about 5-2, but she had huge boobs so who cares about her height. Actually her character was the best part of the movie, unfortunately she was only featured for about 6 minutes in two nude scenes. The rest of the 100 minutes was devoted to these long stares and dramatic pauses just like they had in Once Upon a Time in the West with Henry Fonda. In fact that very movie was shown playing on a TV in bar scene…the director wanted to make sure you got the connection.

This was a typical Italian movie ala 1970 only back then it was at least original, today it’s just silly and boring. When you walked out you understood less than half of what just happened…another quirk of Italian film makers. I hated it.