“The American” Directed by: Anton Corbijn

Starring: George Clooney, Violante Placido, Thekla Reuten, Paolo Bonacelli

MPAA rating: R Running time: 107 minutes

Best suited for: Clooney (the action Clooney) fans, art-house junkies

Least suited for: Clooney (the nice guy) fans, the lighthearted

Acorn Rating Guide:

“The American” is an arthouse film about a somber hit man hiding in the Italian countryside. It’s very much like what 2008’s “In Bruges” wanted to be, before it turned into a bloodbath.

“The American” may be far less bloody, but it is a film about a hired killer, and if you’re looking for George Clooney the romantic lover or George Clooney the goofy oddball, you won’t find him here. Clooney is troubled and sullen and occasionally smoldering. He is also uncharacteristically ruthless.

But there’s one thing you’re sure to get in a George Clooney film, and that is George Clooney. If you like to watch the man act (and I admit I do), then you may appreciate “The American” for all those reasons that others among us won’t understand.

And many people won’t like “The American.” Some may find it pretentious; others will find it predictable, and still others will find a myriad of missing pieces, blatant red herrings or unanswered questions.

Considering it is an art-house film—and quite European in stylistic design and emotional intent— these flaws didn’t really bother me. Nor did the film’s pace trouble me (methodical and languid or, for those who won’t like it, plodding and boorish).

The film’s biggest weakness, in my opinion, is that the opening sequence is so surprisingly brutal that all but the most sanguine among us know exactly how “The American” must end. Thus we’re relegated to watching Jack (Clooney) move through a precisely choreographed series of events—making those wrong moves where we expect him to make wrong moves, waiting for the anticipated and (one assumes) inevitable conclusion.

“The American” is a beautifully filmed picture—much of the action transpiring amid the medieval, cloud-bathed hillsides of Abruzzo, Italy.

Director Anton Corbijn definitely knows what he wants from Clooney’s performance as well as how he wants the tension to slowly mount from the first few frames. (Whether or not he completely understands American audiences—ironic, considering the film’s title— that’s another story.) Corbijn is clearly a fan of the “spaghetti western”—and perhaps of Sergio Leone in particular. If one doubts Corbijn’s close-up framed, silence-punctuated, grimace-filled homage, midway through the film, the director lingers momentarily on an Italian TV set showing the menacing face of Henry Fonda, in Leone’s seminal “Once Upon a Time in the West,” a blithely gratuitous genuflection to intense and violent Italian cinema.

And, if there’s one thing we can learn from “The American”— should we have missed this point in any number of those “one last job” flicks prevalent since the early ’70s—it’s this: If you’re a hit man, don’t tell anyone (especially your boss) that you intend to retire after one last job. This revelation, my friends, will lead to nothing but trouble.

If you are currently a hit man (or a drop-dead gorgeous hit woman, as the ladies of the trade always appear to be), do the last job with a wink and a smile and then just disappear into the balmy night.

You’ll thank me later.