THE AMERICAN (***)

1 09 2010
Check Out the Trailer
Check Out the Trailer

This isn’t a thriller in the American sense of the term. It certainly has more in common with meticulously paced French thrillers, which were as much character studies as they were genre pieces. Director Anton Corbijn has no intentions of making this film for the ADD crowd accustomed to lightning fast editing and adrenaline-fueled action sequences at regular intervals. He is certainly asking his audience to be patient.

Jack, or Edward, (we’re really not sure which name is true) (George Clooney, SYRIANA) is a master assassin. He’s as cold and remote as the wintery mountain setting the film begins in. He is being hunted by Swede assassins. His handler Pavel (Johan Leysen, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF) says he is slipping and needs to lay low. He doesn’t like the safe house set up for him, so he changes the plans. One might expect this to really piss off his boss, but Jack is the best at engineering weapons to precise specifications and Pavel has a new client.
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THE RUNAWAYS (2010) (***)

1 09 2010
Check Out the Trailer
Check Out the Trailer

Young teens dream of rock ‘n roll stardom. They make it. Drugs and egos fuel their spiral down. Sounds like every music biopic and you’re not going to get much more here. But what you will get is three fine performances that lift up the material to a more compelling level.

As the film proposes, Joan Jett (Kristen Stewart, TWILIGHT) wanted to form an all-girl rock band to prove that the girls can rock as hard as the boys. At a club, she meets Kim Fowley (Michael Shannon, REVOLUTIONARY ROAD), a notorious record producer who trolls the clubs looking for the next it act. He introduces Jett to Sandy West (Stella Maeve, BROOKLYN’S FINEST), a drummer who has the same all-girl rock ‘n roll dream. To Fowley’s great surprise, they can rock. So he gets the idea to put the ultimate jailbait in the lead. He finds Cherie Currie (Dakota Fanning, WAR OF THE WORLDS), a Bowie-obsessed 15-year-old and transforms her from a pussycat into a tigress.
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