Abhiroop Das
At the end of ‘The American’, Jack finds himself once again in the game of the hunt — except this time, he is the one being hunted. Based on the 1990 novel ‘A Very Private Gentleman’ by Martin Booth, the film stars George Clooney as a professional assassin who is dispatched to rural Italy, where he leads a double life as a photographer. Jack’s life is one of tragedy. He no longer wishes to associate with his past, and yet, mysterious assassins continue to threaten his peaceful life, forcing him to act. When the identity of the mastermind plotting against him is revealed, it hits closer to home than he expects. SPOILERS AHEAD
The American Plot Synopsis
While living with his partner Ingrid, Jack is attacked by unknown assassins. After dealing with them, he shoots Ingrid in the head in order to get rid of all eyewitnesses. He then escapes from Sweden to Rome, Italy, and dials up his handler, Pavel. They meet at an inconspicuous cafeteria, where Pavel admonishes Jack for taking up personal relationships and advises him to stay low while the Swedes are taken care of. Jack then goes to his assigned location: the small village of Castelvecchio in the Abruzzo district of Italy. Seeing how small and uninviting the place looks, Jack decides to head for a different location, the picturesque town of Castel Del Monte.
Here, Jack adopts the persona of Edward, a professional photographer, spending his time roaming around the town, forging connections, and having romantic flirtations, all the while being haunted by his past. Things take a turn when he receives a new assignment. Suddenly, Jack’s back in the thick of it. The feeling of being surveilled and followed invades his life and dreams. Paranoia encroaches on his budding relationships as he struggles to hold on to his dream of peace. The end to this double life draws near, and the question of survival begins to haunt him again.
Jack’s Days of Hiding are Filled With Paranoia
In Castel Del Monte, Jack meets three important characters: Father Benedetto, Mathilde, and Clara. Father Benedetto is the local priest who invites him over one evening. Here, he expresses surprise towards Jack’s disinterest in the history of Abruzzo, the place he’s supposedly photographing. Benedetto claims that it is a very American thing to live in the present by ignoring the past. This reflects Jack’s mental state, as he spends his days hopelessly trying to bury his past with Ingrid, but is still tormented by nightmares, paranoia, and guilt. Benedetto has a past of his own — he tells Jack to check up on the local mechanic Fabio, who is supposedly in bad company. After noticing a picture of Benedetto in Fabio’s room, Jack concludes that Fabio is the priest’s illegitimate son.
In the meantime, Pavel assigns Jack a new mission: to custom-build a rifle for Mathilde, a fellow assassin. Assured that he will have no direct involvement, Jack takes up the responsibility and meets Mathilde in an open market. She asks for the making of a special rifle, with high-powered capabilities, long range, and noise suppression, all the while being compact enough to fit inside a briefcase. Jack explains to her the complexity of her demand before ultimately agreeing to make it. While he arranges most of the rifle with ease, creating a suppressor remains hard, forcing him to use scraps from Fabio’s shop to finish his work. Mathilde, impressed with his work, asks for a few final adjustments and commissions custom-made bullets, scheduling the delivery of the rifle in one month.
Jack’s Relationship With Clara Is His Turning Point
Jack’s time in Castel Del Monte is punctuated by his meetings with Clara, a local prostitute. Initially, Jack only intends to solicit her services, but gradually develops an interest, exchanging glances, going back for her company, and simply wishing to meet her more often. Between blending in with townsfolk, making Mathilde’s rifle, and avoiding a mysterious stalker, Clara seems to be the only positive element in Jack’s life. Benedetto, suspicious of the true nature of Jack’s stay in the town, remarks that he lives in a special kind of hell, “a place without love.” This forces Jack to confront his own feelings, leading to a realization that he craves an emotional connection with Clara, and he begins to envision a peaceful and loving life with her.
Following this, he takes Clara out for dinner, where they discover new aspects of each other and grow closer. This is cut short by Jack’s discovery of a gun hidden in her bag, raising suspicion. Taking her out on a picnic to a secluded riverbank, he tests and later confronts her over the gun. Here, Clara reveals that she keeps it for protection against the serial killer who has been going around killing prostitutes. Jack, finally feeling at ease, flirts with the notion of trusting another person again. When Clara suggests that they live together, Jack reluctantly says that they cannot, but in his heart, he yearns for the same.
The American Ending: Who is Behind The Attempts On Jack’s Life?
Having found love, Jack no longer wishes to associate himself with this line of work. He contacts Pavel, making it clear that this is to be his final assignment, following which he will retire. Pavel seems to accept his request, but right after, calls Mathilde and tells her to “Listen very carefully…” as the scene ends abruptly. Right before leaving with the briefcase carrying the finished rifle, Jack contemplates and then reopens the case. This minor scene contains a major piece of foreshadowing about events that are soon to follow. Eager to start a new life, Jack proposes to Clara during a religious procession. From atop a roof, Mathilde watches silently, her rifle aimed at Jack — ready to shoot. The moment she does, however, the rifle explodes, blowing off a part of her face.
As it turns out, Jack had long held his suspicions about Mathilde and, anticipating her attempt on his life, rigged the rifle before delivering it to her. Originally, Mathilde planned to assassinate him right after the delivery; however, she failed to do so because of Jack cautiously bringing her to a public setting. Following this, she makes yet another attempt the next day, which ends up backfiring — quite literally. Jack rushes to a dying Mathilde and asks her who commissioned this entire operation, to which she replies “The same as you,” implying that the mastermind behind it all is his own handler, Pavel.
Pavel’s reason for all of this is simple: from his perspective, Jack is a loose end. As a successful assassin, Jack knows and has seen too much. For him to retire and develop real relationships makes him an unreliable asset. Initially, Pavel even considers Ingrid to be the reason the Swedes located him, and his suspicious perception persists. Thus, Jack is deemed unfit for this business, and is to be promptly eliminated. However, Jack’s intuition and astute senses help him escape death and bring the whole truth out in the open. Just when he prepares to move, Father Benedict springs up behind him, confused at the scene.
Why Does Jack Spare Clara and Father Benedetto?
Father Benedetto is an innocent man who has tried, throughout his relationship with Jack, to make him confront his past and confess his crimes and come to terms with his regrets. Killing Ingrid is Jack’s biggest guilt and regret. When Father Benedict witnesses Jack standing over the body of wounded Mathilde, the scene plays out the same scenario with Father Benedetto having replaced Ingrid as eyewitness. Jack has the gun pointed at Benedetto, but this time he chooses not to kill. At the cost of compromising himself, Jack spares Father Benedetto. Instead of choosing to mindlessly survive and protect himself by killing innocents, Jack realizes the value of life and regrets the merciless act itself, apologizing for it.
This realization comes after the promise Jack makes to Clara. In love with Clara, Jack desires to retire from his life of crime and live with her. Implicitly, Clara is the recreation of Ingrid. Building a romantic connection with Ingrid resulted in Jack taking lives — hers, and theirs as partners. Jack establishing a similar relationship with Clara in an environment fraught with dangers is his re-founding of trust. During the religious procession, Jack proposes to Clara, promising her a future where they live together, she agrees, confessing her love to him. However, this new beginning must first survive a sacrifice. The visuals of the Virgin Mary and the symbolic lamb at the beginning of this scene foreshadow this development.
Does Jack Die in The End?
With Mathilde’s dead, Jack heads out for one final showdown with Pavel. Realizing that he’s being followed, Jack lures Pavel into empty streets, waiting for him to lower his guard. As Pavel gets ready to take his shot, Jack, sensing him from behind, sharply turns around and aims his gun at Pavel. Jack is faster and shoots Pavel on the forehead, killing him. The great betrayal ends in the snap of a finger, and Jack drives towards his new life with Clara, free from this insidious business and its dangers.
However, while driving, Jack touches his abdomen, only to find them red. Realizing that he has been shot, he drives faster — desperate to reach Clara, whom he promised to meet by the river. In a movingly rendered scene, the audience follows his expressions the entire time, as they circle between fear, desperation, and resolve. Upon reaching, he manages to exchange glances with Clara, but it’s already too late. The final scene shows Jack’s blood-stained fingers sliding down his windshield as he loses consciousness, with Clara shouting his name, “Eduardo”. Due to the extent of his injuries, Jack is unlikely to survive.
The Significance of The River in The Ending of The American
Jack loses consciousness by the river, a secret place which is apparently visited only by him. He introduces the place to two women — one is Mathilde, who functions as a reminder of the life he wants to shed, and the other is Clara, with whom Jack desires to begin a new life. With Mathilde, he plays a pretense of a picnic, his real purpose being to test-run the rifle. This sequence is conveyed with romantic undertones, posing intimacy as Jack talks about the butterfly that lands on Mathilde. The second time the river reappears in the story is when Jack brings Clara there for a picnic to find the truth about the gun she carries. This time, the romance concludes positively, with Jack clearing wishing to spend the rest of his life with her.
In the final scene, the elements of these two moments engage in a tug of war, to decide once and for all which one of his two lives Jack truly belongs to: that of an assassin or a lover. His final moments are left ambiguous, but there is an important piece of visual metaphor that conveys the message. As Jack’s consciousness slips away, the camera pans away from them and to a white butterfly fluttering in the forest. This symbolizes the end of Jack’s life, both as an assassin and as a human, as he assimilates back into nature, he finally finds the peace he so dearly desired.
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