The American · reception & legacy
2010 · Anton Corbijn
How The American has been received, argued over, and remembered.
The arc
Sold as a George Clooney action thriller, it topped the US box office on Labor Day 2010 and promptly infuriated the audiences that bait-and-switch brought in — while critics were far kinder to its slow, European art-house rhythms. It's since been quietly reclaimed as one of Clooney's most underrated films, a favourite of the 'quiet assassin movie' faithful.
What's debated
The eternal split: is it a hypnotic Melville-style mood piece or just a beautiful nothing where Clooney does push-ups in Italy — 'boring' vs 'meditative' is the whole conversation.
Its footprint
It lives on as the textbook case of art-film-marketed-as-thriller whiplash, endlessly cited in discussions of misleading trailers — and as a touchstone for the whole 'lone craftsman assassin in a picturesque European village' mode later films kept returning to.
Where it stands
A slow-burn cult object: the connoisseur's pick in the Clooney filmography, the kind of film Letterboxd reviewers preface with 'criminally underrated'.
Named by the director
Influences Anton Corbijn has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.
- Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) — Corbijn cited Leone's western as a touchstone and tips his hat to it directly within the film itself.
- Sergio Leone — Corbijn spoke of the film as his take on the western and named Leone as the presiding influence on its lone-stranger-in-town shape.