American Star is a smart, thoughtful, precise movie that knows what it wants to say and how it intends to convey that message. Deliberate and well-acted, the movie never feels like it meanders, even if it spends a lot of time with its main character Wilson, played brilliantly by Ian McShane, wandering around Fuerteventura, Spain.
The setting helps, but the movie is mostly a character study, carried brilliantly by an actor who doesn’t need his surroundings – and sometimes doesn’t even need a scene partner to convince us of whatever he wants to convey. McShane’s Wilson is having an existential crisis in this, his last assignment. That much is clear. The rest isn’t interesting because the movie is trying to subvert expectations, it’s interesting because at some point we forget about what those expectations even are.
We’re just along for the ride.
There are some narrative issues – the plot could be tighter, and a lot of the secondary characters are just there for the sake of Wilson, with no real development or purpose other than to further his plot. This is somewhat understandable, but the movie is very bad at giving them depth, to the point that we don’t really care about what happens to them outside of what Wilson thinks or feels about them. They are means to an end – or sometimes, ways to get necessary exposition – and just that.
However, on the whole, it’s hard to care all that much when one is as enthralled in what McShane is doing as the movie makes you feel. The actor, a fan favorite for a long, but particularly since his turn as Winston Scott in the John Wick movies, has always known how to exude charisma, but his performance as Wilson is particularly noteworthy. There’s sorrow in Wilson, but there’s also an undercurrent of pain – and also a bone-deep tiredness, even before the movie makes all those emotions come to the surface.
A man like Wilson, however, cannot just stop. Resting isn’t just hard, it’s impossible. There’s always another thing, another job. That’s what makes this “last assignment” so complicated, so full of feelings. What do you do when the end comes? How do you process the idea of moving on? Of change?
Perhaps you don’t. Perhaps you reject that change. Maybe when life wants you to change, you instead change others. Who said you have to play by rules that have been established by someone else? It’s an interesting philosophical quandary, and though we don’t exist in the same world Wilson does, it’s worth examining the bigger question, because one way, we will all have to decide how we deal with an inevitable change. And like Wilson, we will also have to decide if we just accept it or if we find a workaround, whatever that workaround might be.
American Star is in theaters now.