---
title: The American Friend
type: Movie
date: 2024-06-23
rating: 8
year: 1977
director: Wim Wenders
tags:
  - movie
status: Finished
image: the-american-friend.jpg
colorSortKey: [0, 39, 0]
---
 A deeply _real_ and viscous sort of thriller. There were so many naturalistic fluorishes — long, languid shots on our two protagonists in deeply grimy places, bursts of the kind of quiet human humor that rarely brighten a serious script, casual lapses into German and authentically implacable accents — that this felt less like the taut production of [[klute]] or the painterly opus of [[ripley]] and more like something from le Carre or Len Deighton.

Hopper and Ganz are terrific, two, as a pair of leads who convince you both as friends and enemies alike.