One of my all time favorite movie posters. Love the throwback style.

The American, yet another movie about an American assassin in Europe, opens September 1st. A lean George Clooney stars in his first role as an action hero since Batman & Robin… Ouch. I just felt the air go out of the room. But wait,  I think its time we give him another chance. Clooney is one of the few in Hollywood that seems to be aging well naturally, and I don’t just mean his looks. Sure, he seems to have grown more handsome with time (he’s now 49), but he also seems to have grown less conceited, more personable. Of course I don’t know the guy personally, but his performances in movies like Up in the Air have highlighted cracks in the famous playboy’s armor. He has seemed vulnerable, even lonely, and definitely empathetic. So I’m interested in the emotional complexity he can bring to a typical spy movie.

However, I’m not so sure The American will be typical. The story is adapted from the novel, A Very Private Gentleman, by Martin Booth. I haven’t read it but the title evokes a slow-burning, quiet thriller rather than a slam-bang, explosion party like we’re used to. Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer famous for his iconic shots of U2 and Depeche Mode among others, directed the film, only his second feature. His first, Control, the story of the short life of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, released to much criticial acclaim in 2007. However, I fear Corbijn because of what he did with Linear, a long-form music video that was meant to be a companion to U2′s latest album No Line on the Horizon. Linear is unwatchable, in fact, it would be far better if it was just a black screen and U2′s music. Several segments are just long (as in several minutes) point-of-view shots of the road zipping by in front of a motorcycle rider. I love U2 but I could not sit through Corbijn’s mind-numbing film. Also, he did an alternate music video for Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” that just looks amateurish. I trust his bleak, subtle syle as a photographer, but I don’t trust him as a director. We shall see.

The first trailer for The American is intriguing. The second is loud and chaotic like a trailer for a Bond movie, and it seems like an attempt to woo American male audiences. Here is the first.