Nice effects though.

Disappointment for a huge fan!

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

The American Friend is an interesting film. The film follows Jonathan, a family man with a blood pathogen, a frame maker, and a quiet and thoughtful fellow. He is recruited by the Mafia in France to assassinate two people, and the Mafia use his blood disease to dupe him into the jobs with the promise of money for his wife and son. The story takes Jonathan from Germany to Paris to complete the jobs, and his friend and handler, Tom, acts as his guardian angel during the more difficult moments.This movie is a mixed bag for me. Their are a lot of really great things about the film. The film is colourful, with wonderful establishing shots, use of costumes, and really great direction and shooting, which make the film really gorgeous. It manages to look almost surreal at times, and the use of head shots, close ups and panning to establishing what is happening make up for a lack of dialogue in the film. The acting is good, with Dennis Hopper as Tom being particularly interesting, and Bruno Ganz doing a quiet and reserved Jonathan well. The film has some tense moments as well, as the assassination jobs move forward, with Jonathan, the amateur assassin, tailing his prey, making mistakes, and having to improvise. The domestic scenes are also poignant, sweet, and entertaining. Much of this film is quite solid, with brooding and tense moments mixed with quiet and surreal to create a very tense and dream-like atmosphere.However, I had some reservations about this film. The story and plot were quite dull. I have watched slow burners many times, with films like Le Samourai being one of my favourites in the film noir line. The American Friend felt much slower. There is little dialogue at all, and much of the film features Jonathan trying to figure out what to do, with long shots of his expressions, him contemplating and so on. This felt very weak to me, and I struggled to hold my attention a few times. There were also a few confusing plot points. The various side characters in the film appear, at least at the beginning, to be part of a wider plot that may be revealed. This is never capitalized on, however. These characters flutter through hither thither, but there is no pay off, no explanation, to why we are seeing these set ups. Why do we need to go back to New York with Tom? Jonathan will never know anything that happens there.All in all, a bit of a mixed bag for me, but one I consider worth watching. It is a slow burning film to be sure, with a plot that I would approach calling weak, and a tad dull. Even so, the colourful and innovative shooting and direction, the good acting, and the tension and surreal aspects of the film, lend a hand to make it a watchable film. Easy to recommend for fans of film noir, or more "art house" affair. 6/10

Wim Wenders' film has all the hallmarks of having been concocted deliberately for lovers of European art house, but it is not convincing. The plot is straight out of Hitchcock, an ordinary family man(Bruno Ganz)meets a mysterious, menacing enigma (Dennis Hopper) who leads him out of his safe world on a series of dangerous missions in other big cities(Paris/ Munich). There is a sub-plot around the use of frames and perception, that plays on the Ganz's characters job in a picture framer/ restorer, but I would have been oblivious to this if I had not read the notes that came with my DVD. The real problem arises in that Bruno Ganz treats the role seriously and puts some convincing angst into the ghastly situation he is put in, but Dennis Hopper clearly does not take the film seriously. Reportedly he came to blows with Ganz for his refusal to learn his lines and his mumbling, mock-mad acting style only ends up killing the impact of his dialogue. Either Hopper felt a European film was beneath him or he knew that Wenders plans were too pretentious to be taken seriously. Wenders is also apparently incapable of shooting a single attractive scene. He makes Hamburg bleak, New York uninteresting and even manages to make Paris ugly.

Much like Paris, Texas (the only other Wenders film I've seen), this is a very nicely shot film and I enjoyed most of it purely on aesthetics alone.However, I did not think the storyline was up to much and the fact that it hinges on a rather ridiculous scenario (that an average guy with a terminal illness would agree to kill two strangers in return for money to pay for his family after his death) made it all the harder to watch. It's not that the intention is all that ridiculous but the fact that he was so gullible as to believe these gangsters when they sent him to random doctors who told him he was going to die very soon yet his own doctor proclaimed otherwise. It was a bit like, well, they're OBVIOUSLY conning you and just paying these quack doctors to tell you that you are going to die, just to scare you & get you to do the job! Plus the possibility of getting away with it and the family not being in any danger either form the gangsters or the law afterwards was hard to believe also. I mean, we even saw that CCTV recorded him doing the first killing in the subway so he would have been caught anyway and if he died in the interim his family would still have been hounded by the law. So in that sense it was all rather contrived.The ending, as noted in one other review I have just read, was a weird change of tone and became almost (unintentionally?) comical and it also dragged out too much.All in all, I loved a lot of how the film looked but I don't think I could be bothered to sit through this film again.

Jonathan Zimmermann, a picture framer in Hamburg has a terminal blood disease.Tom Ripley is an American art dealer dealing in forgeries.He wants to use Jonathan's condition to his advantage.He is introduced to a gangster who proposes to the dying man he should become a mob assassin.That way he could leave a lot of money to his wife and son after he is gone.After a little while he agrees to do it.Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend) from 1977 is a film directed by Wim Wenders.It's loosely adapted from the novel Ripley's Game (1974) by Patricia Highsmith, which I haven't read.This movie is very good.Dennis Hopper does an amazing job as Tom Ripley with that cowboy hat.I am very worried of Mr. Hopper's condition.He is losing his battle with prostate cancer and he is saying goodbye to his friends.All we can do now is wait for a miracle.We can't overlook the performance of Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann.He plays the part of a dying man so well.Lisa Kreuzer does great work as his wife Marianne.Gerard Blain is great as the gangster Raoul Minot.Director legend Nicholas Ray is terrific as Derwatt.Screenwriter/director Samuel Fuller is brilliant as The American Mobster.The movie has some very fine moments.When Jonathan goes to the subway, following the man he should kill...It's all very intense.Or when Jonathan is supposed to do his second killing in a train and Ripley appears and does the deed in a toilet.Between all that violence the movie seems very beautiful.