George Clooney, Paolo Bonacelli and Violante Placido
Dir Anton Corbijn
Gifted photographer Anton Corbijn directed this movie about an assassin turning in one last contract before retiring. This is a well trodden trope, and is married to the assassin genre to the point of being inextricable. More attention seems to be paid to how the film looks than how the plot plays out but it does achieve a mood of languid ecstasy and regret which is not entirely unpleasant. There is some structure for the pastiche to stick to: Clooney drifts around unable to form meaningful connections to people lest they be killed, betray him, or reveal themselves to be agents set on killing him. He is a highly skilled gunsmith and the idea of craftsmanship resonates through the American beginning to end. This is something Corbijn must feel very personally as evidenced by any of his gorgeous videos for artists like Danzig, U2, Henry Rollins, and Nirvana. Some of his still photographs are iconic – as if Annie Leibovitz and Herb Ritts had a kid and the photos are of many of the same subjects as Leibovitz. He bridged the worlds of film and music videos with 2007’s Control which I have yet to see but have heard is a loving biopic about the life and death of Ian Curtis of Joy Division. I can’t image anyone could bring a better Ian Curtis to the screen, though, than Michael Winterbottom with 24 Hour Party People.
So you’ve got some shootings, orders from shady characters, meetings in train stations but mostly you have two things in this movie.
Beautiful Landscapes and
Italian hookers.
Sometimes you even get both in the same shot. There’s also a lot of gunsmithing – but little point in showing screen captures of it here when you’ve already seen the hills and the hookers. How can gunsmithing compete? All the women in the movie are beautiful, willing to share a bed with Clooney, and rarely clothed. I guess he’s George Clooney, they probably all would be but some might at least play hard to get, right?
The characters and their motivations seem a little minimally constructed, and the ending left me annoyed with its predictability but you couldn’t say it wasn’t easy on the eyes.