In 1993 a transatlantic cruise liner, originally built in 1939, was bought with the intention of being turned into a floating casino. The liner’s name was the ‘American Star’. The following year, while being towed, she was shipwrecked during a storm off the coast of Fuerteventura. She became a tourist attraction, subjected to the waves that batter every coastline until in 2007 she eventually succumbed to the inevitability of nature and disappeared from the view of the world.
The life of the transatlantic liner is a somewhat heavy-handed metaphor for the plot of the movie American Star. American Star is, at its core, the story of a man, Wilson, played by Ian McShane (Lovejoy, Deadwood), waiting for an appointment that is unexpectedly delayed. It is essentially a modern-day retelling of Waiting for Godot. The main difference in this version is that Wilson is a hitman for hire, and the person he’s waiting for is his mark.
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Whilst waiting to carry out the hit, Wilson drives about the island, meets and hangs out with a local barmaid, Gloria (Nora Arnezeder – Army of the Dead) and makes friends with a child, Max (played by Oscar Coleman) who is staying at the same hotel as him.
Ian McShane gives a star turn as the assassin waiting for the hit to happen. Wilson’s costume is a simple suit which, as the movie progresses, gets more relaxed, shorthand for our lead getting comfortable within himself as much as with the island. Through his relationship with Max we uncover his past as a survivor of the Falklands war and the impact that has left on him. The interactions between Wilson and Max are sensitively portrayed, though on occasion a little odd. Max’s parents are conspicuous by their absence, apparently fine with their offspring wandering alone in a vast hotel complex, along a beach in the early hours of the morning and talking to strangers.
Wilson’s other main interaction is with Gloria the barmaid. Their relationship is very reminiscent of Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson’s turn in Lost in Translation: an older man spending time with a younger woman in a platonic friendship. In this case, Gloria acts as tour guide to Wilson as, they look for the shipwreck. It’s gentle and sweet and gives tenderness to their final scenes together.
The backdrop and soundscape to American Star are almost as important as the dialogue (of which there is none for almost the first ten minutes of the movie). Filmed at Fuerteventura, most of the film is shot showing the bleak, almost desert, volcanic landscape, intersected by long straight modern roads and dramatic coastlines, little impacted by the people who live on the island.
The soundscape to American Star is an understated affair. The incidental music, when it comes, almost feels like an intrusion into an otherwise quiet world. The film’s composer, credited only as Remate, has focused far more on the natural sounds of the island: the wind rushing in from the beach, the gentle susurration of waves on sand, the clean rattle of a chain on a jewellery box. Each sound is clean and deliberate, lending itself to the “slice of life” feel of the film. The incidental music is almost an afterthought, as if the audience needs a break from the quiet on the longer tracking shots of cars and mountains.
A regular setting in American Star is the humble hotel corridor, with its repetitive familiar nature of identikit doors, but an added almost claustrophobic feel as Wilson fills the space in his dark suit, drawing the eye of the viewer simply to the movement along the unchanging background.
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This movie is definitely in the slice of life category. If you are expecting explosions and violence of a Jason Statham movie, or something from the Jason Bourne series, you will be sorely disappointed. This has far more in common with Glengarry Glen Ross or Lost in Translation and asks the audience to simply spend time getting to know, ostensibly a man on holiday, as he waits for a man he has never met to arrive.
It’s a slow burn, filled with understated character development and an almost non-existent plot before the final coup de grace which catches you by surprise as you realise you are actually at the end, as it feels it comes from nowhere. The final scenes however feel slightly pretentious; perhaps it would have had a stronger ending without the last two minutes, or if it been a short film, rather than a full-length cinematic endeavour. The biggest takeaway for this reviewer? I really want to visit Fuerteventura again.
American Star is out in UK cinemas and on digital platforms on 23rd February from Vertigo Releasing.
