
Reviving an old story that most of us would recognize, “American Star” takes one through the extremely old age of a Contract killer and how he plans to execute his last contract. Having been filmed on the enchanting Fuerteventura situated in the Canaries, the movie adopts a more gentle and slower narrative and stylistic techniques, where less is said more is shown quite creatively and involving Ian McShane’s performance in the film that is among the best reactions driven performance of the most quiet character where character’s thought does the talking. Quite literally, everything has been conveyed through the face and eyes. This film contains a series of moments, with the star being Ian McShane involving long shots when the action takes place.
What is it all about? I’m asking because I watched “America Star,” and it is still not completely clear to me, perhaps due to the fact that the director of the film Gonzalo López-Gallego aids the editing of the film himself and the scriptwriter Iñaki Faerna sometimes devises telling passages over long distances intervals long pause acceptable; the reason for this is more that it is the kind of movie where the visual and aural and the rhythm of the entire film is actually ‘the only thing off’, not any lower case ‘theme’ in the first place.
The movie opens with Wilson in Fuerteventura, after renting a car and heading towards a house in the middle of a desert, which would be the suspected hiding area of his target unfortunately, the house is vacant, and when a girl (Nora Arnezeder) appears it is the right moment for Wilson to escape.
Wilson goes to the city where he is constantly relishing the comforts and indulgences of a plush hotel which he has told some people is the cause for his visit. He watches some live performances, such as an acoustic rendition of Europe’s The Final Countdown, while properly interacting with other locals, employees at the hotel, and the residents of the resort, one of whom is a young boy Oscar Coleman. The child is seen sitting on a hall floor outside a closed door where an argument is seemingly going on between his parents. In one of his outings to drink, he comes across Gloria, the bartender he had seen earlier in the club. Gloria becomes attached to Wilson in such a short time that she even invites him to her house to meet her mother (Fanny Ardant). So what is the nature of Wilson and Gloria’s relationship? Confronting the process Wilson and Gloria try to build relations forces the internal development of Wilson and reveals unsuspected character traits of Gloria.
“American Star” is a film in which the audience spends the entire time simply waiting, and not just for Wilson to bag his target on his holidays in Fuerteventura. Wilson’s age is not defined in the film but there is McShane who is already at the age of 81 and there is a conversation regarding the participation of his character in the Falklands War in the year 1982, so one has the impression that he was definitely not a young man then. But whatever his official vintage, it is clear that he is nevertheless Wilson, an older man who is encumbered waiting on his death. The road behind him has also been longer than the road in front with the waiting calmness that he has placed himself into. His official vintage aside, Wilson is a man awaiting his dusk because he has seen brighter days. The title of the picture is further the name of a ship that has been wrecked along the coastline of the island. As if listening to the story on a specific topic only makes sense if one has some sort of background, the man however only just misses the younger years of that particular ship. The film depicts the vessel as an object that does not move resting on the seabed but is much more delicate than one might expect.
Generally, the characters in a noir genre are portrayed as doomed and no matter how much they try to change their fate, their end will be devastating. As “American Star” moves away from the European arthouse style and starts to adopt a film noir style, it does in fact leave an unexpected sour taste in the audience’s mouth coupling with the gentle, at times almost whimsical, charming tone that most of the story builds up.
But this is also the point in the film when everything begins to take shape, especially when Wilson bumps into Ryan, the Zack of his old platoon. This young Ryan is a hitman, he appears to be tasked with making sure that Wilson does not deviate from the plan. Or, once Wilson has completed his mission, Ryan’s only job is to kill him. His true identity is unclear to us as he is an obnoxious…
At least, until he went too far with Wilson. Then you start to hate him, only for things to get complicated again. He is somewhat repulsive because he is young and arrogant, yet so full of potential. Ryan is a young deluded lad under the impression that he is invincible and perhaps so was Wilson in his youth.
It is difficult not to notice that López-Gallego shares some sort of a unique bond with McShane (the two also collaborated on the film The Hollow Point in the year 2012 ). In the latter, when Wilson attunes himself to the child and the mother of Gloria, his native attraction shines through. The man is pleasant looking, and he has a nice laugh when one hears it, it makes one question the lifestyle that Wilson had abandoned for this one; which entails moving around isolated areas with a black suit, a gun underneath, and a need of killing someone that he has never met before. This is the case, however, when one is in the presence of a reserved character, which Wilson very often impersonates in the same manner that Clint Eastwood or Alain Delon used to engage their fans.
McShane was a character actor for 60 years and rose to prominence during his sixties after playing deadly charmers in some extremely foul Movies and TV series such as Sexy Beast, Deadwood, John Wick, American Gods, and the list goes on. While doing so, he also happens to be ‘of the sixties’ (and the seventies, for that matter) a period during which he feels more comfortable performing in productions filled with characters who aren’t strictly defined as good/bad, and those that allow for storytelling where there is room for the audience to think, or even debate, on what was being said.
American Star is “the most driven work ever” being precisely in that spirit. For fans of the art-house genre in crime film, there might be a sketch of some other films such as The Limey: “I remember the days of High Noon – the days of Wilson” or Terence Stamp’s recent ventures of unimaginable success in 20th century Lawson, where he gets an assignment for a hitman and starts focusing on his shot.
This seems to be a limit for most cliches of how a film of that fandom could end. Maybe that much has been said of the post-modernism crisis hitman who is up for a final job, the genre got cluttered with the ideas of repackaging rather than reinventing. Anything different would be a disservice to such ‘one last job’ Westerns which he and a few others descended from, those mastered subtleties so effortlessly. There was a demanding under-represented feeling present throughout the movie looking off its brilliant asymmetric structure. López-Gallego has a notable meticulousness.
A stellar performance by the star complemented by expert direction will produce such classic unforgettable shots as the face of the leading man filling the screen in a prolonged close-up.
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