The American

My review of Clooney's The American

This film exposes a flaw in our American idiom. Many people wrote "worst movie I've seen this year." That's not what they mean. When people say this, they actually mean "I hated this film more than any other." There's nothing "worst" about the film. Roger Ebert gave it four stars.

There was, however, something deeply amoral, or maybe immoral, about the marketing. If you saw the ads you probably think it is some kind of Bourne/Bond thing with plenty of action in exotic locales, right?

Wrong. It's a classic example of Euro-angst. It's a Tarkovsky-style art house film bookended by two mediocre action sequences. Most of the time it consists of George Clooney sitting or standing around doing nothing, not even talking.

A better title for the film? Solaris 2.

There's plenty of female nudity to enjoy, if you like that, and I assume you do if you are reading this. If not, you can enjoy some endless, wordless nighttime shots of Clooney listening to his own footsteps as he walks through medieval cobblestone streets bathed in red light, then green, then yellow, then back to red. (The film's aesthetic is based entirely on traffic signal sequencing.)