In the American, professional-killer-in-hiding Jack sort of hits it off with a local Italian priest named Benedetto. It’s not friendship, really. The time they spend sipping bourbon and eating goat stew is virtually silent. It’s more that they have some deep commonness. Both their callings necessitate a certain level of professional isolation. Priests are councillors; they give advice and hear confession. There’s not a lot of room for friends. And of course, in theory, even less room for romantic companionship. For Jack, it’s even starker. Get close to him and you might get him killed. More likely, you get yourself killed.
The movies opens with a hard example of what happens when Jack opens his heart. An isolated cabin in rural Sweden. A fireplace working. Jack stirring the ice in his drink with his fingers then letting his companion lap it off his skin. It’s a tender scene, that’s obviously post-coital as she’s nude, stomach down on the bed. The next day they take a hike when they’re shot at. “Why do you have a gun, Jack?” she asks as he preps to fire back. He takes out the attacker with a double- tap then orders her to “Go back to the cabin and call the police." As she turns, he shoots her in the back of the head as she’s seen too much. In Italy, where Jack (keep in mind we never find out what he really does for a living and the things he's done; and we never really find out) will lay low, he tells his boss, “She was a friend, she had nothing to do with it.” “Don’t make friends, Jack,” his boss replies. “You used to know that.”
That first Swedish sequence is an amazing narrative in itself. (It reminded me of the mini-movie in Jackie Brown, the Omar sequence, where Samuel Jackson tricks Chris Tucker into climbing into his trunk before killing him, that Ebert said was the best work Tarantino had ever done.) In one 10-minute brushstroke, we get a portrait of a very complicated dude. Jack isn’t James Bond. Jack doesn’t casually bed his female nemeses to get info. He actually has the capacity for tenderness. Maybe, it’s more than capacity. Maybe it’s an appetite. On the flipside, he can shut down that appetite. And when he does, not in a calculating way but in a practiced, sharpened instinct, it’s startling yet sad. Pity is what I felt for him as he left Sweden on a ferry, his eyes letting us know he really lost something.
Repetition and variation, right? So when he begins to fall for Clara, an Italian-prostitute-with-heart-of-gold, of course there’s a very sharp expectation of danger.
If Jack can keep that just a business relationship and focus on his current assignment – a request for a custom long-range rifle – Clara stays safe. Of course, sex in her red-lit bedroom / office becomes off-duty dinners and picnics (that's not the only thing Jack ate... I rolled my eyes a bit when he went down on her before paying in Euro for the session). And when pros again show up to get Jack (there’s an amazing night chase scene involving a Vespa that ends with Jack smashing his assassin’s car window, pulling the assassin out seatbelt still on, and snapping his neck), he thinks Clara must be involved. This storytelling move worked on another level, too: I got to forgive the honourable-prostitute convention since Jack's even more suspicious than I, the seasoned moviegoer, was. At one point, from behind the wicker of their picnic basket, Jack cocks a pistol and points at Clara.
Director Anton Corbijn (working from a screenplay adapted from the novel A Very Private Gentleman) builds on the rich foundation of the first Swedish sequence not just narratively but tonally, too. This is a film of isolation and paranoia. Check how Jack does his push-ups and chin-ups, to a bare, music-less soundtrack; check the steady-cam shots from behind of Jack walking through small-town Italy, as if we can reach out and tap him on the shoulder before jamming a gun in his chest. This isn’t Angelina’s Salt, a double agent banshee who loudly runs through Americans and Russians. Clooney plays sad, killer monk with a past we never know. It’s this quiet and mystery, though, that gives The American its surprisingly affective pathos and resonance.
