2 min to read
American Star
Can a movie having Ian McShane be a hit man be any good?
The Good: While I didn’t really care for the movie in general, it doesn’t negate that the movie was beautiful. It seemed to me that everything was shot on location, so the beaches, deserts, and background environments shown were all beautiful. While I was disappointed by the ongoings of the film, I enjoyed the scenery and the cinematography of the film. The only other part of the film was Ian McShane. He definitely was doing his best despite a lackluster story and script.
The Meh: Everything subpar about the movie was bad rather than meh.
The Bad: One of the main reasons I wanted to see the film was the premise of the film. A hitman is on his last assignment, and the hitman is being played by Ian McShane. To me, this sounds like it may be a John Wick but with Ian McShane, which sounds incredible. In actuality, the movie was barely even that. The beginning of the movie starts off optimistically, but once Wilson (Ian McShane) gets to the location to do the job, the target isn’t there. Because of that, Wilson was to wait until his target got there to finish the job. This made 90% or more of the movie literally being a stall. Yeah, Wilson made connections/friends at the location he was to do the job (like Max and Gloria), but those connections and built relationships didn’t even seem meaningful. By the end of the movies, instead of having these connections mean anything to him or even being meaningful to the story, but by the end he ended up killing Gloria and having a mediocre goodbye with Max. Maybe to some that may be alright, showing how depressing a hitman’s job can be, possibly having to kill people you care about, but it just seemed emotionally hollow and that they had no idea how to make anything, even death, seem significant.
Being a hitman movie, I was also hoping for more hitman action. There was probably only a total of 2 minutes of this in total, and it was at the very end of the movie. The action wasn’t even that good too, making the movie even more disappointing.
Overall: While a visually beautiful movie, overall it was bland. There was nothing pushing the plot forward, and everything in the movie seemed contrived. There was no reason for the story to take place, and you can even see that in the events of the movie. I think the movie was trying to be an introspection of a hitman and what one thinks while doing a mission, but it couldn’t even do that. When you hear about a movie that is about an about-to-retire hit man, you get excited about the possibilities, but this one was almost as boring as it gets.
Another Note - I was one of very few people who actually saw this movie in theaters. Apparently, the worldwide box office was 15,849 USD.
Rating: 1.5/5
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