Starring George Clooney and Thekla Reuten. Rated 14A. Opens Wednesday, September 1

As the title suggests, a pungent whiff of spy writer Graham Greene hangs about The American, in which hit men shoot first and ask few questions later, although any ugliness is mitigated by the presence of George Clooney at his most square-jawed and silent.

Here, the grey-haired Yank plays a pseudonymed assassin whose work—recently going a bit awry—has taken him from snowy Sweden to sunny Italy, and not in search of pasta, religion, or Julia Roberts. Still, a local priest (Paolo Bonacelli) does try to give him some food for thought, and he manages to fall in with a hooker who looks like a movie star. (The actor’s name, Violante Placido, offers a wonderful touch of contradiction to the ambiguous proceedings.) And he passes some time with another beauty (Thekla Reuten); like him, she works for a shadowy figure (Johan Leysen, channelling Terence Stamp) who wants our guy to pull—you guessed it—one last job.

The tensely constructed movie, based on Martin Booth’s novel A Very Private Gentleman, is a second feature for Anton Corbijn, the Dutch photographer and video director responsible for brooding images associated with U2, Metallica, and Depeche Mode. His previous effort, detailing the demise of Joy Division, was called Control, and that title is just as apt in this case (and, intriguingly, within The Limits of Control, Jim Jarmusch’s similarly toned tale of a taciturn hit man on the run in several countries).

Jarmusch was getting at something metaphysical about morally dispassionate assassins. Deeper meanings are hinted at but never quite delivered here in a script by Rowan Joffe, who recently wrote and directed Brighton Rock, which really is based on a Greene book. Its pedigree is strong, but the lack of serious twists—in action or philosophy—makes this American not quite bright enough in the end.