Jack (Clooney) is a hitman/gunsmith who begins the film in Sweden, where he commits as act of violence that will haunt him throughout the rest of the film. Escaping to Italy he hides out in a small countryside town and takes on a new assignment for a mysterious client (Thekla Teuten, In Bruges). The town's elderly priest (Paolo Bonacelli) quickly sizes Jack up as someone whose soul is in torment, and tries to befriend him, but Jack is a little more interested in getting to know Clara (Violente Placido), a beautiful and vivacious prostitute. However the quaint old town is full of dark, cobbled, maze-like alleyways and Jack, who is unable to escape his past, is constantly on guard for enemies lurking in the shadows.
Clooney, rightly or wrongly, is associated with characters that are charismatic and amiable. Jack, on the other hand, is solemn and cold; too hard a character to care about, not because of his immoral choices but because we find out so little about him during the course of the film.
The American suffers from being too earnest and relying on a heavy amount of visual symbolism, struggling to find a suitable way to express the film's message without banging the audience over the head with it. Corbijn's lack of subtlety as a filmmaker means that when he does make smart choices he is unable to do so without pointing it out to his audience, spoiling the magic somewhat. Corbijn coming from the world of photography and music videos certainly knows how to make a visually engaging film, but he hasn't quite learned how to tell a good story yet.
