“The American” (George Clooney) introduces himself to others as Edward. To his handler/boss, he’s Jack. We obviously don’t know his real name and in the crunching mountain snow of Sweden where lethal international assassins have gathered to play their reindeer games, we meet Jack, our protagonist, and witness him commit an act of unspeakable cold-blooded evil without even a moment’s hesitation.

The whys and hows of Jack and his situation are never fully explained because they’re not important. Death is his business and therefore it’s understood his cover must be protected even at the price of his own soul. And so he leaves the country, covers his tracks (even from his handler), and travels to a quaint small town in Italy where he hopes to hide in plain sight from those lethal Swedes and complete the kind of job where, this time, he won’t have to pull the trigger. His new commission is to craft a particularly nasty tool of the trade for a female assassin as intriguing and unknowable as she is beautiful.

And yes, this will be Jack’s last job before he gets out for good. 

But you already knew that.

You would think a seasoned killer experienced enough to survive until his hair went gray would choose a better place to lie low than a small village where he conspicuously stands out – and then some — as the sole American. An aging, local priest fingers him as such immediately.  The only explanation for this counter-intuitive decision appears to be to satisfy the cinematographer, because the old-world setting nestled into a mountainside complete with winding cobblestone streets is truly lovely to look at. (more…)

In an interview published today, The Atlantic describes Gore Vidal as “a sharp provocateur, as irascible and irreverent as ever.”

I’m assuming that’s some kind of internal Atlantic-code for ”twisted old has-been degenerate desperate for attention“:

ATLANTIC: In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

VIDAL: I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

Vidal then goes on to blame Polanski’s legal problems on… (more…)