The American

"The tough-cool tradition of classic French crime dramas lives in Anton Corbijn's thriller, "The American," until oddities and an unbelievable love story render it soft and nearly forgettable."

"It is a reasonably skillful exercise in genre and style, a well-made vessel containing nothing in particular, though some of its features - European setting, slow pacing, full-frontal female nudity - are more evocative of the art house than of the multiplex."

"George Clooney returns, setting aside the warm and witty persona that his fans love, and giving them instead one of his darkest and most unsympathetic characters: an ice-cold professional killer marooned in loneliness and fear."

"Here is a gripping film with the focus of a Japanese drama, an impenetrable character to equal Alain Delon's in "Le Samourai," by Jean-Pierre Melville."

"Thriller shoots first then asks existential questions later. For quite some time."

"Nothing really adds up, and the ending is downright absurd. You would like even the most austere, doctrinaire existential movie to earn its downbeat ending. This one fails utterly to do so."