It was late summer 2010. People flocked to theaters expecting a high-octane spy thriller. The marketing for the George Clooney film The American featured him holding a ruger with a silencer, looking intense. It looked like Bourne. It looked like Bond.
Then the movie started.
Instead of explosions, we got long, lingering shots of the Italian countryside. Instead of quippy one-liners, we got a man meticulously filing down a firing pin in total silence. Audiences hated it at first. It famously earned a "D-" CinemaScore. But here’s the thing: those people were wrong. Over a decade later, this movie has aged into a minor masterpiece of "Euro-noir" because it refused to play by the rules of the Hollywood blockbuster.
The George Clooney film The American is basically a Western in disguise
If you look at the plot on paper, it’s about Jack (or Edward, he uses aliases), an assassin hiding out in Castel del Monte after a job goes sideways in Sweden. He’s there to build a specialized weapon for another operative. That’s it. That is the whole movie.
Director Anton Corbijn didn’t want to make an action flick. He’s a photographer by trade—the guy behind iconic U2 and Depeche Mode imagery—and he treated the George Clooney film The American like a moving painting. He actually based the vibe on the 1990 novel A Very Private Gentleman by Martin Booth.
Jack isn't a hero. He's a craftsman.
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The movie focuses on the "work." We see the physical labor of being a killer. It’s boring. It’s lonely. Honestly, it’s probably the most realistic depiction of a professional hitman ever put to screen because it acknowledges that 90% of the job is just waiting and being paranoid.
Why the pacing feels so "off" to modern viewers
We are used to rapid-fire editing. The average shot length in a modern thriller is maybe two or three seconds. Corbijn lets the camera sit. You watch Clooney drink coffee. You watch him drive a small car through narrow cobblestone streets.
It creates this incredible tension. Because the movie is so quiet, every small noise—a footstep, a car door, a bird taking flight—feels like a gunshot. It forces you to inhabit Jack's paranoia. You start looking at the background of every frame, wondering if that priest or that mechanic is actually there to kill him.
That ending: What actually happened in the woods?
People often ask about the final sequence. Jack is trying to get out. He’s fallen for Clara (Violante Placido), a local woman who represents a life he can’t have. He builds the rifle for Mathilde (Thekla Reuten), but he sabotages it.
When Mathilde tries to kill Jack with his own creation, the gun backfires. It’s a moment of poetic justice that feels very much like an old Sergio Leone Western. Jack is the "man with no name" who realizes he can't escape his past. The final shot of the butterfly—a recurring motif throughout the film representing the Meneleus Blue Jack studies—symbolizes a soul finally leaving its cocoon, even if that exit is through death.
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It's tragic. It's beautiful. It's definitely not Ocean's Eleven.
The technical obsession of Jack
One of the coolest parts of the George Clooney film The American is the attention to detail regarding the weapon. Jack builds a customized Ruger Mini-14 with a suppressor.
He uses:
- Standard plumbing parts for the silencer.
- Hand-drilled baffles.
- Custom-weighted subsonic rounds.
The film treats these objects with a weird kind of reverence. It’s about the intersection of lethality and craftsmanship. Clooney plays this with almost zero dialogue. He uses his face—which, let's be real, is one of the best in the business—to convey a soul that is completely hollowed out by his profession.
Why this movie actually mattered for Clooney’s career
At the time, George Clooney was the biggest movie star on the planet. He could have made Batman & Robin 2 if he really wanted to (okay, maybe not that). But he chose this.
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He was leaning into his "European" phase. He lived in Lake Como. He wanted to move away from the "sexiest man alive" trope and toward something more akin to Jean-Pierre Melville’s Le Samouraï.
The American proved he could carry a film without his trademark smirk. He’s cold. He’s almost unlikeable for the first twenty minutes. By stripping away the charm, he revealed a much more interesting actor underneath. If you haven't seen his later work like The Midnight Sky, you can see the seeds of that stillness being planted right here in the mountains of Abruzzo.
The Italian setting isn't just window dressing
The town of Castel del Monte and the surrounding Sulmona region are characters themselves. The labyrinthine streets reflect Jack's mental state. He’s trapped. There is no straight path out of his life.
The locals in the film weren't all professional actors, either. That adds a layer of grit that contrasts with the polished, metallic world Jack comes from. When he sits with Father Benedetto, it’s the clash of two different centuries. The priest offers absolution; Jack offers a blank stare. It’s a brutal, honest look at the impossibility of redemption when you’ve spent your life taking others.
Common misconceptions about The American
- It's a "Bond" knockoff: Not even close. Bond is about the fantasy of spying. This is about the misery of it.
- Nothing happens: A lot happens, but it's internal. The "action" is Jack deciding whether or not he is still a human being.
- The romance is forced: Actually, the relationship with Clara is meant to be transactional and desperate. They are both people looking for an exit strategy from their lives.
How to watch it today for the best experience
If you’re going to revisit the George Clooney film The American, do yourself a favor: turn off your phone. This isn't a "second screen" movie. If you check your emails during the quiet parts, you’ll miss the subtle shift in Jack's eyes when he realizes he's being followed.
- Watch it on the biggest screen possible. The cinematography by Alberti (who did The Wrestler) is stunning.
- Listen to the sound design. The wind in the trees and the hum of the engine are more important than the dialogue.
- Pay attention to the colors. Notice how the cold blues of Sweden at the start transition into the warm, dusty earth tones of Italy, only to turn cold again as the climax approaches.
The film is a slow burn that actually pays off if you let it breathe. It remains a singular entry in Clooney’s filmography—a quiet, brooding, and ultimately devastating look at a man who waited too long to try and be good.
To truly appreciate the craft, look up the photography of Anton Corbijn before watching. Seeing his black-and-white portraits of Joy Division or David Bowie helps explain why he framed Clooney the way he did—as an icon being slowly eroded by time and guilt. After your first re-watch, compare the ending of the film to the original ending in Martin Booth's book; the differences tell you everything you need to know about the director's specific vision for Jack's fate.