Despite a lead actor who is at the absolute top of the A-list, The American was largely able to fly under the radar for most of the summer. The first poster was released in mid-June and the earliest trailers were attached to both Jonah Hex and Inception, but beyond that, there was still very little promotion for The American. Still, buzz was spreading like wildfire…George Clooney was going to be playing a spy/assassin in Europe, so associations with the Bourne Trilogy and 2008’s surprise hit Taken were skyrocketing. Early critical reviews were immensely positive, Roger Ebert going as far as to claim that The American represented George Clooney’s best performance to date. Simply put, going to see The American was a no-brainer.
Given my expectations, watching The American was nothing short of a slap in the face…it is, hands-down, the worst movie I have ever seen, and trust me, I’ve seen a lot of crap over the years. I cannot process how critics have been giving The American anything close to positive reviews. The film is slow, boring, and offers almost no characters, dialogue, or story; I just sat in the theater, constantly checking my watch to see when this epic failure was going to end. To be fair, I can’t criticize George Clooney’s performance, and that’s simply because there wasn’t one…The American was almost two hours of Clooney just walking around on the screen. I kept waiting for something to happen, hoping and praying that the film would get better. The one saving grace I have that could justify my seeing this travesty is that I can hopefully prevent others from wasting their time and money. George Clooney once publicly apologized for his performance in Batman & Robin and offered to reimburse anyone who had a ticket stub; well, I saved my stub for The American, because I want my money back!
For more information, please read the full review.
Overall Recommendation: Very Low
