'THE AMERICAN' - HOW TO FIX A BORING MOVIE

Last night I managed to slog through a long, slow, tedious movie that was disappointing because it could have been good. It had beautiful photography, excellent acting and potentially good story elements. But the story was hugely under-developed.

"The American" stars George Clooney, who is a good actor and very alive on the screen. He's about 50 now, handsome, with a strong jaw and iron-gray hair. He's very watchable. He was really good in "Up In The Air" and "Syriana," both of which were really strong, I thought. He's done a zillion movies and TV shows.

So the movie has a credible star. He's convincing. He looks like he could hit a home run, throw a touch-down pass, or kick a strong man's ass. Well, almost. You get the idea.

The movie also features several hot babes, often naked, as if that could make up for a boring story. Not even. But they also were great actresses, clothed or not. That helps.

(SPOILER ALERT: I'm gonna give away the plot.)
[If this post is too long, look at "MOVIE FIX":
http://rogerangle.blogspot.com/2011/02/movie-fix.html ]

The story is about a hit-man who works for a craggy old geezer who looks good on screen but whose character makes no sense. We don't know who the old guy is or what organization he works for. 

The hit-man is on vacation and is shacked up with a lovely lady friend, who is of course naked in the opening scene. 

They are lounging around in an isolated cabin by a frozen lake in Sweden. They get dressed and go for a stroll through the snow and he is attacked by two other hit-men who shoot at him.

We don't know who they are, or why they want to kill him. Of course, since he is our hero, he plugs them both. OK, fine. He's good at what he does.

Then, for no credible reason I could figure out, he kills the lovely woman he is with. Maybe he is bored with her, or maybe she has bad breath. Maybe he doesn't want her to know he's a hit-man.

I don't know, but it made no sense to me. I thought, WTF? What are we supposed to think, that he always kills the ones he loves? It didn't work for me. 

Then he gets on a big jetliner and flies to Rome where he contacts his boss, who tells him to hide out in a small village in the Italian hills. Lovely place. Mountains and meadows all around. Gorgeous.

Then, for about a year, not much happens. He drives, he walks, he eats. He is not supposed to make friends.

He goes to a whorehouse and starts banging a lovely hooker. He meets the local priest and they talk. The priest can tell that Jack, now calling himself Edward, is not the professional photographer he pretends to be. This scene is mildly entertaining. 

Eventually, after another year of tedium, he gets an assignment to build a custom sniper rifle for a beautiful woman. We don't know why. He keeps saying he is bad with machines, but in fact he is an expert gunsmith.

Almost nothing in the movie is explained, like who these people are and what they are up to.

On screen, our hero/hit-man takes approximately the lifetime of an elephant to fashion this gun. I guess if you are fascinated by drills and wrenches and blue steel, this sequence could be fascinating. I found it a giant snooze.

The beautiful hit-woman is the only female in this film who keeps her clothes on, all the time. Frankly, I didn't care. I thought the nudity was all pointless anyway, just for show. Perhaps it has some symbolic value that I missed. (Don't get me wrong, I love naked woman, even more than most guys.)

I guess I didn't care about anything in the movie except the scenery. The few action scenes are well done. And I remember a few steamy sex scenes. But I thought they were gratuitous.

Our hero falls head over heels for the lovely hooker. I don't know about you, but I think falling in love with a hooker, or even a former hooker, is a pointless and unrewarding thing to do. Talk about looking for love in all the wrong places. In this movie, however, it is supposed to be redemptive.

Ezra Pound said you have to have lived a certain amount of life to be able to understand any given work of art. If you know anything about hookers, they are not good choices for long-term relationships.

Overall I found the movie artsy, juvenile, and nonsensical. Much of the time, the only tension came from my wanting something to happen.

The story has little logic and almost no plot. The ending is especially ridiculous. Here is a plot summary:

Anonymous hit-man, running away from unknown killers, falls in love with a hooker, builds a sniper rifle for another killer, and finally is killed by his own boss, all for no apparent reason.

Does that sound like a good story to you? It didn't work for me.

Now, what would I do to fix it? The problem is that the story meanders and is meaningless and pointless. So I'd give it structure, meaning and a point.

I’d give the strangers a reason to try to kill him. I'd make them part of some shadowy organization. You wouldn't have to identify it. The movie would become a more conventional thriller, but it does need a plot. I’d give Jack an ally, someone on the inside of the organization trying to tip him off. Then I’d have that person killed.

I'd give the story a McGuffin, something everyone wants. You know, the diamonds, or the secret map, or the nuclear device. Whatever. Doesn't matter what it is. Just that people are killing each other for it. It could even be fake, like the statue in "The Maltese Falcon."

I’d create two or three new suspects, so we wouldn't know who the big bad guy is, at least not at first. I’d drop the hooker from the story and have the gorgeous hit-woman seduce Jack and have her fall in love with him. Then I'd have her refuse to kill him. That would put her in conflict with her boss.

I’d have them both battling the bad guys at the end. Then they could both be killed or get away, and it would still be a satisfying story, either way. The point would be that Jack gets his freedom, dead or alive.

What do you think?

Copyright 2011, Roger R. Angle