I saw The American last night, a fine assassin movie starring George Clooney (as Jack), who was excellent. Clara, the prostitute who falls in love with Jack (and he with her), is gorgeous (Violante Placido, the Italian actress who played Clara, is also a singer/songwriter - I'm going to look for her music).
The plot - more particularly, the climax - is complicated. I'll sketch it out here, and then give my analysis (based on just one viewing of the movie). Spoilers obviously follow.
Jack, hunted by his would-be assassins, goes to Italy to hide out and take on an assignment from Pavel, his boss. The assignment entails making a rifle to specifications for Mathilde (played by another beauty, Thekla Reuten). Shortly before his assignment is completed, Jack makes it clear to Pavel that this will be his last (his affair with Clara has awakened all kinds of feelings). Pavel calls Mathilde on her way to her concluding meeting with Jack - to pick up the rifle and give him the payment - and Pavel tells Mathilde to "listen very carefully". At this point, we need to watch very carefully, because this is where the best, complex fun starts.
Mathilde is set to kill Jack after he gives her the gun, but a busload of kids and Jack's alertness prevent that. Later, Jack and Clara are in a town celebration, and vow to go away together. Mathilde, who was told by Pavel to find away to kill Jack, after her initial failure, has Jack (and Clara) in the sites of the very rifle Jack designed. In the climatic scene, she pulls the trigger - but the rifle appears to blow off part of her face, and we also see a gun or some sort of viewing mechanism pointed at her. Jack gives Clara the money he received from Mathilde, tells Clara to go to their secret place by the water, and runs up the stairs to find Mathilde, dying on the ground. Which she does. But then Pavel gets the drop on Jack, who wheels around and kills Pavel. Jack drives to Clara, but discovers he's been shot, apparently/likely mortally. He makes it to Clara, and the movie ends. A powerful 15 minutes of cinema indeed.
But what, exactly, happened? Here's my take:
Jack built the rifle to explode in Mathilde's face in the first place - but was that his assignment or his own innovation? Likely his assignment - that is, that's what Pavel wanted (the only reason Jack would want to kill a client was if he wanted to cover his tracks). Meanwhile, Pavel - when he learned that Jack was definitely leaving the business - instructed Mathilde to kill Jack, expecting that Mathilde would later die on her own mission when the rifle exploded. When Jack confounded Mathilde's first attempt to kill him, Pavel waited with a gun on Mathilde, as she took aim at Jack with the rifle. Why was Pavel doing this? My guess is he couldn't be sure that Mathilde would take the shot, and/or wanted to finish her off in case the exploding rifle didn't get her. As it was, he got to his revolver on Jack...
A riveting, original plot, reminiscent of some of John le Carré's work. I'd enjoy seeing a sequel, but Jack probably didn't make it out of the car by the water ...
The Plot to Save Socrates
"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
The plot - more particularly, the climax - is complicated. I'll sketch it out here, and then give my analysis (based on just one viewing of the movie). Spoilers obviously follow.
Jack, hunted by his would-be assassins, goes to Italy to hide out and take on an assignment from Pavel, his boss. The assignment entails making a rifle to specifications for Mathilde (played by another beauty, Thekla Reuten). Shortly before his assignment is completed, Jack makes it clear to Pavel that this will be his last (his affair with Clara has awakened all kinds of feelings). Pavel calls Mathilde on her way to her concluding meeting with Jack - to pick up the rifle and give him the payment - and Pavel tells Mathilde to "listen very carefully". At this point, we need to watch very carefully, because this is where the best, complex fun starts.
Mathilde is set to kill Jack after he gives her the gun, but a busload of kids and Jack's alertness prevent that. Later, Jack and Clara are in a town celebration, and vow to go away together. Mathilde, who was told by Pavel to find away to kill Jack, after her initial failure, has Jack (and Clara) in the sites of the very rifle Jack designed. In the climatic scene, she pulls the trigger - but the rifle appears to blow off part of her face, and we also see a gun or some sort of viewing mechanism pointed at her. Jack gives Clara the money he received from Mathilde, tells Clara to go to their secret place by the water, and runs up the stairs to find Mathilde, dying on the ground. Which she does. But then Pavel gets the drop on Jack, who wheels around and kills Pavel. Jack drives to Clara, but discovers he's been shot, apparently/likely mortally. He makes it to Clara, and the movie ends. A powerful 15 minutes of cinema indeed.
But what, exactly, happened? Here's my take:
Jack built the rifle to explode in Mathilde's face in the first place - but was that his assignment or his own innovation? Likely his assignment - that is, that's what Pavel wanted (the only reason Jack would want to kill a client was if he wanted to cover his tracks). Meanwhile, Pavel - when he learned that Jack was definitely leaving the business - instructed Mathilde to kill Jack, expecting that Mathilde would later die on her own mission when the rifle exploded. When Jack confounded Mathilde's first attempt to kill him, Pavel waited with a gun on Mathilde, as she took aim at Jack with the rifle. Why was Pavel doing this? My guess is he couldn't be sure that Mathilde would take the shot, and/or wanted to finish her off in case the exploding rifle didn't get her. As it was, he got to his revolver on Jack...
A riveting, original plot, reminiscent of some of John le Carré's work. I'd enjoy seeing a sequel, but Jack probably didn't make it out of the car by the water ...
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
16 comments:
Hmmm I never thought of that. I thought there was a moment where he paused over the brief case and I assumed he may have modified the gun.
It seems a very intricate assassination plot to kill an assassin. Probably is the best way.
Tbh Jack was losing his edge. Why even say when you are out?
The scene before he goes to drop the briefcase, it shows him remove the rifle. I believe at this moment, he changes the mechanism in the gun to explode backwards, killing the shooter(in this case the woman). I believe he did this because he was on edge after being followed by the blonde man who tried to kill him. The only person who knew his location was his employer. He threw the phone he was given out of the car window so it couldn’t be tracked. It never explains how he is found though. When he changed the gun, he did the move off of his instincts. I would like to know who the men were talking to Clara that night showing her something. I figured it was a picture of Jack. I believe his death was ironic because all he wanted was to get away and live peacefully. Clara called the river a paradise. When he arrived in the car, before his “death”, there was an unusual glow. Like it was a paradise with the woman he so desperately desired. And he never really got to have that paradise she depicted. Overall a great movie
It showed Jack clearly filing the striking part of the gun before he gave it to Mathilde, he must have had his suspicions
I think the men speaking to Clara were detectives showing her pics of the dead prostitutes in Pescara. Clara mentions that later when explaining to Jack why she has a gun.
The men speaking to Clara were the police seeking the prostitute killer.
I saw this in the theater when it first came out in 2010, and last night on TV. My feeling is the same: a nice character study by real snoozer. The best part was Violante nude. I could watch that all day long! My guess is that he altered the rifle to kill Mathilde because he knew his days were numbered anyway and was sick of assassins. He knew she was supposed to kill somebody important ("Will I read about it in the Tribune?" he asks). Anyway, it was an OK film, but would not recommend spending 2 hours on it.
A major plot hole is how Clara got to the river before Jack. She left just after Mathilde was killed but she didn't have a car of her own. Did she hitch hike? Take an Uber?
I agree to that it does appear that Jack realized that Matilde was going to kill him, so he filed down the firing mechanism. They do portray him as having good instincts so this is no surprise when he finally figures out that he is the target. Just before she dies, Matilde does tell Jack that her boss is the same as his. Now he knows that Pavel is somewhere nearby and begins his walk back to his place. Luckily he kills Pavel but not before he too is shot. I too would like to see him survive and star in the sequel but having him die at the end does make the movie more poetic like a Greek tragedy.
I believe that the two men that Clara was seen by Jack, talking to were the police that she mentioned, who showed her the pictures of the murdered prostitutes.
no way... Pavel was always the one trying to kill Jack. He let the Swedes know where Jack was, used his relationship with the girl at the cabin as an excuse. He set up the first sanctuary town to kill Jack but Jack sensed the unfriendliness of the town and moved on. It took Pavel a while to track him down. Jack suspected all along that Pavel was the one who set him up and became certain at the end. Long story short, as Pavel knew where Jack was the Swedes knew where Jack was. Mathilde was originally going to kill someone else... possibly. There are some unknowns. We don't know how long Jack had been on vacation with the girl and whether he had been working just before. We don't know for certain why he killed the first girl although it is probably, in the psycho world of contract killers in movies, a logical or coldly necessary move. Possibly he just killed her on the off-chance she had led the Swedes to him. Whatever the reason, this murder becomes the emotional driving force for the rest of the movie, perhaps it symbolizes his past life. The rest of the movie is him moving away from this haunting and evil life choice. Cutting to the end. The Swedes failed to kill Jack. Jack basically believes Pavel's mind-fuck and suspects Clara--he is planning to kill her by the stream but he is in love with her and feels guilty. Then his heart melts, he believes her reason for carrying the gun and decides to live his life with her. She symbolizes innocence, actually the two women he loves stand for his own innocence, the first is the one he murders, the second is his redemption. Pavel gave him the contract work to prepare the rifle so that he could pinpoint his location and allow the Swedes to kill him. Because Jack is astute he notices the man in the blue shirt who was in fact assigned to get him. Throughout the movie you can see clues that as Pavel knows of Jack's location the Swedes know the same. Even if Pavel was not 100% set on killing Jack but was only allowing the Swedes to do it, when Jack quit Pavel decides to kill him for sure. Jack originally built the rifle correctly, it was not originally designed to kill the user. Jack was not certain Pavel was trying to kill him until he decided Clara was innocent. When Jack is packed and ready to move out there is a moment of thought where he makes up his mind. It is at that point that he becomes certain Pavel is going to kill him and will use Mathilda to do it. He modifies the rifle to kill the user. At the meeting with Mathilda he feels her out to become certain her assignment is to kill him. She fails the test, noticeably hesitating when he asks her if he will read about her assignment in the paper. Actually she was supposed to kill him at that meet, but again his astuteness saves him. She is also very competent, that is why she gets the drop on him with her rifle... That is it in a nutshell. A very spare and simple movie. The first time I watched it I was annoyed that it was so simple but honestly it is a beautiful movie, Clooney is awesome. I have watched it several times. There were some other interesting issues in the movie, like Clooney incorrectly calling the mini 14 an M14, and the fact that that was probably not the best choice for that particular assignment. There is so much subtlety, like the fact that Mathilda is better than Jack at putting the mini 14 together. Anyway beautiful movie.
IMO Jack knew that Mathilde was going to try to kill him....he rigged the ammunition to explode in her face....the scene lingering on Jack loading the components of the ammunition foreshadowed this...there is no other reason to show him putting together the ammunition like that.
When Pavel offered him the job to build the gun he said "you don't even have to pull the trigger yourself." The gun was intended to kill Mathilde all along but the modification couldn't be made until after they test fired it.
A Bike was shown Parked Besides a Tree, Near the River, where she was waiting forJack
Oh wow. Good catch!!
It is indeed a great movie. One of my favorites. Thanks for the analysis. Because I, too, was confused a bit.
I believe some are overcomplicating it. Obviously Jack is being stalked by the Swedes over a past job. After Jack kills the "friend", the woman he was at the cabin with in the beginning, who was just a civilian, Pavel then realized that Jack was becoming a risky asset. 2 things Pavel said makes this clear..."do not make anymore 'friends' and "youre losing your edge". The final problem is that Jack, because of his actions with the woman at the cabin, and his new love, is really proving to Pavel that he really is having thoughts about his future, about getting out, about retiring and moving on with his life. Nobody leaves "the life" they say, except in a pine box. So when Jack says he will deliver the weapon and then he is "out", that is the nail in the coffin. Pavel has no chance but to take him out, and as soon as he hangs up with Jack, he calls the assassin Mathilde, "Listen to me..", we hear him say. Because Jack is a smart man with goof instincts, he knows that he is not going to be just allowed to retire in peace, and so he then modifies/sabotaged the rifle that he is to deliver to Mathilde. He also is nervous during the exchange, carefully watching the 2 men sitting in the Cafe, who aren't really a part of anything. And meeting Mathilde outside the shop instead of staying in, and the lucky fact that a bus load of people pulls up, negates any chance of confrontation between him and Mathilde at that time, because it is obvious by then that she has been charged to kill him. Some people on here have commented that this was her original order, to kill Jack. But I don't believe this, and I believe that Pavel simply added an additional job for Mathilde after Jack says he's quitting. "OH, by the way, kill Jack before you go to do your original assignment" that sort of thing. We see Mathilde aiming her rifle with Jack in her sights from up on a hill, and I must admit that I thought Pavel shot her (perhaps because she was hesitating). I thought at first that she saw Jack was obviously in love and in my mind I thought Mathilde was thinking about not killing him because she had a soft side as well...and I actually thought she was shot by Pavel..which doesn't make sense, until I realized that the gun has backfired, and the assumption is that Jack rigged it to do this. So Jack goes to find Pavel, who gets the advantage on Jack and ends up behind him..Jack spins and they both shoot..Pavel goes down. We don't see until Jack is driving away that he has been shot. When he arrives, just barely, at the picnic spot I thought he was hallucinating about Clara being there..I thought it was just a dying memory of when they were there days before on their picnic. Because I was confused about how she got there before Jack since he was driving, and she would have had to leave directly after the exploding gun scene, and that still doesn't make sense to me that she made it there before him. Someone's comment said they saw a bike leaning against a tree, but I am still skeptical that she could have made it there before him. Maybe this really is a dying dream hallucination at the very end of the film?? Who knows? I also saw another comment or said, "why let your boss know that you want out of the assassin lufe?" In does indeed seem unwise to voice this desire, especially sense the common knowledge, in movies at least, is that you can never just walk away from that life, it's never that easy. I've heard sone say it was a good movie but that it took 2 hours and was slower paced, but this is one of the things I like about this movie, and it's European-made style to it. You can have a great movie with all the Hollywood reliance on all the action-packed shootouts and car chases. I like a film that is a bit slower and more subtle, like this one. Kudos!
You are SO wrong! No just kidding, I agree with you..the 2 women are symbols, good catch.
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