The American (2010) is the epitome of a slow movie. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a slower assassin themed movie – not even close.
When you think of all the silent bits of standing around, walking, driving, and basically doing nothing that a really good movie condenses out… If you stuck all that junk filler content together to create its own movie (adding just a few minutes of mildly good stuff) then you would end up with The American!
I skipped forward through about half of this movie. It’s seriously boring. But there are some mildly interesting scenes. There’s a serious lack of script, and a serious lack of words. 40 minutes in I very nearly gave up on it entirely. I dare say this is an unwatchable movie, but I did watch most of it, skipping past the worst of it from the middle onwards.
What more is there to say? George Clooney is getting old – he’s nearly 50 here. He poses a lot, without saying much. His performance isn’t bad, but the script is practically non existent. Why would he waste his time with garbage like this? Maybe there’s an audience for this kind of slow & near-silent movie, but it’s not for me. I think I may have tried to watch it once or twice before, but gave up after just a few minutes.
It takes me back to the days of having only 5 options on TV, when we regularly watched the ‘least worst’ option and may have been passingly amused for a few moments here & there but was generally bored stiff and would never willingly tune in to that kind of tripe in the days of unlimited choice online.
Admittedly it does warm up a bit, in the back end of the movie, as it becomes clear there are people tracking him down, and he gets very close to a woman who he doesn’t trust after finding a gun in her handbag. The last half hour is kind of respectable, with several mildly entertaining scenes not terribly far apart – it’s still rather slow but not nearly so torturesome as the first hour was. It’s like a snailpace old James Bond movie with budget slashed and a depressing final moment. I feel like a mug for even watching it. Never again! The things I do, so you don’t have to…