Jack (George Clooney) is a professional assassin whose last assignment in Sweden went badly. His unhappy boss (Johan Leysen) thinks that he has "lost his edge." In Italy, Jack is told that his next job does not require him to kill anyone. He chooses to settle down in Castel del Monte, a small medieval town where the remnants of history and the folly of the human quest for power and greed are strew all around him. Jack is a patient man with incredible instincts, a finely tuned and muscular body, and an ability to blend in with the crowd. He tells those few people who ask that he is a photographer.

The only person in the town who shows any interest in him is Father Benedetto (Paolo Bonacelli), a priest with his own unsavory past. When he finds out that Jack is an American, he observes sadly that it is a country that thinks it "can escape history." The question is, can Jack?

Eventually, the enigmatic outsider goes against the wishes of his superior and has some steamy sex with Clara (Violante Placido), a beautiful young woman who is a part-time prostitute. She recognizes him as a man who "has a secret" and gives him the nickname "Mr. Butterfly" because of his tattoos. We wonder, is he, like the rare butterfly he sees in the woods, an endangered species?

Jack meets with another assassin named Mathilde (Thekla Reuten) who wants him to custom make a gun. Although he has joked with the priest that he isn't good with machines, it turns out that he is a skilled craftsman who takes this work seriously. As he constructs the weapon, Jack has the distinct feeling that he is being stalked again as he was in Sweden. Hearing a noise in the night, he wakes in a sweat with his gun in hand. There is no rest or peace for an assassin and dealer in weapons.

The American is directed by Anton Corbijn and based on a novel by Martin Booth. In contrast to the usual Hollywood dramas about hired killers, this one moves slowly with very little dialogue in order that we can enter Jack's solitary and lonely hell. At one point the priest admits that those who seek him out have "much sinning in the past," implying that they are really seeking confession and absolution. But Jack is very reticent to take this path even though he seems to have reached the end of his rope as a hired killer. What bothers him most is that he has fallen into the habit of trusting no one. This is obvious during an idyllic picnic in the woods with Clara after he discovered a hand gun in her purse during their last rendezvous.

Jack really does seem to want to retire from this nasty existence of deceit and destruction and to find a more peaceful and authentic life. Can Mr. Butterfly metamorphosize into someone completely different? As is true for many of us yearning for personal transformation, there are forces at work that he cannot control. The American is a bold film that covers fresh ground and impresses with Clooney's bravura performance and the rich, moral material explored in the story.


Special features on the DVD include deleted scenes; “Journey to Redemption: The Making of The American”; and feature commentary with director Anton Corbijn.