One Paragraph Movie Review: The American Friend

Twelfth film: Wim Wenders’ ‘The American Friend’. Filmed in the shittiest parts of Hamburg, Paris and New York, Roger Ebert starts his review of this movie with the apt sentence: “There’s something cheerfully perverse about filming a thriller and then tossing out the parts that would help it make sense”. For some reason though, it’s very good. Dennis Hopper is always just a bloody delight to watch, and he plays Tom Ripley — the 1977 version preceding Matt Damon’s talented one. The main character, whose framing shop I want to live in forever, is played by Bruno Ganz who you may know as Hitler in that Hitler meme, but young, brooding, and hot. The flared trousers are fantastic, the dying-art-restorer-turned-assassin plot just followable enough, and the train travel dangerous. Great to watch if you like not knowing why you like things and moustaches. Three and a half incongruous cowboy hats out of five.