Rating: 
Summary: ambivalence: "I just want to be your friend, Jonathan"
Review: ...Henry James once said that it was the germ of a situation, the imaginative possibility, not its final historical explication, that inspired his stories. So. Wenders is inspired by a paranoid thriller, just as Hitchcock was in "Strangers on a Train," another Highsmith thriller. But in each case, of course, the director uses the novel to tell an entirely different story, the story he has in mind. In Wender's case, the story is of a kind of doubled ambivalence, a meditation on the relationship between west Germany and "America", a political, economic, political and, to be honest, military quandary, and the relationship between European "craft" and American "cultural imperialism." Let's be clear on this: Jonathan is a craftsman, from the old European school, .... And yet Wender, in an interview I saw, in his thickly accented but otherwise perfect English, said, "Rock und Roll safed my life." Wender has always been resolutely apolitical in the kinds of films he makes, but his camera does not lie, and for that reason, his movies are charged with political questions that are deeply human and personal, and make me think more about what I believe.
Rating:
Summary: Memorable edgy one-of-a-kind thriller
Review: A German frame maker (Ganz) with a fatal blood disease and therefore perhaps little to loose reluctantly takes on the roll of hit man after a chance encounter with an unethical American art dealer (Hopper). The brilliant acting by Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz and Gerard Blain on its own makes this a really memorable movie. Certainly, this is Dennis Hopper at his most edgy, something he does well and in my opinion this is his most outstanding performance ever. Ganz is convincing as an honest and reasonable man trying to make the most of a bad situation. Likewise, Blain is a joy to watch in his role as the smooth professional fixer calling the shots.
I'm not sure if the movie could be said to have a "Hitchcock" influence, but I would say that those who like Hitchcock may well enjoy this. It combines mystery, great camera work and a dark film noir plot with a sound track reminiscent of a Hitchcock movie. The movie also has a black humour to it as Ganz and Hopper bungle their way through the murderous business of doing away with various criminals. The second train sequence for example is an absolute hoot and you could easily be watching a Tarintino movie. Overall, this is one of my favourite films and while it is certainly quirky it stands out as being rather unique.
Rating:
Summary: The American Friend
Review: A superb rendering by Wim Wenders of the Patricia Highsmith novel Ripley's Game, with Dennis Hopper and Bruno Ganz in memorable acting. Unforgettable the scene on the beach in Hamburg in the orange VW Beetle, with Ganz muttering BABY YOU CAN DRIVE MY CAR! Get it!
Rating: 
Summary: Ripley as a Low-life
Review: After reading the novel, I was disappointed in the Wenders treatment, which portrayed Ripley as a rather sleazy barstool cowboy transplanted in Germany, rather than the outwardly affluent, comfortably-married amoral intellectual of the book. I felt that Dennis Hopper was playing a continuation of his Easy Rider role. The European locale was interesting, if bleak, and, again did not provide the ironic contrast of the French provincial setting. Bruno Ganz was excellent, however, as the troubled craftsman. The denouement was rather tenuous.
Rating:
Summary: A Meditative Masterpiece
Review: Despite the casting of a well-known (some would say, "infamous") American actor in the form of Dennis Hopper, Wim Wenders' take on the very American "film noir" style in "The American Friend" was every bit a fit with the work that came before and after. The same thoughtful approach to character and story that animates Wenders' "road movies" is also on display in this adaptation of Patricia Highsmith's novel "Ripley's Game." "The American Friend" draws the viewer into its web with subtle twists, a captivating atmosphere and excellent performances by Dennis Hopper as the mysterious Ripley and Bruno Ganz (later to star in Wenders' "Wings of Desire") as the ordinary man who gets caught up in Ripley's web. With its exceptionally careful pacing, the film is certainly not for everyone. For those willing to embrace Wenders' unique approach, however, the end result is a truly gripping film that will stay with you long after some more viscerally thrilling movies have faded from memory.
Rating:
Summary: Ganz and Hopper are Wonderful!
Review: Ganz and Hopper simply take over the film, using the cheesy gangster plot as just a dance floor. They're a delight to see. This film brought me to tears I missed Hamburg so much. You'll never feel more in northern Germany than with this film. Unfortunately, it is probably the finest film ever to still have the masses come away saying they didn't get it. . . .
Rating:
Summary: A raw realistic movie
Review: How often did we experience european/american cinema that turned out classics? Only a few, and The American Friend is one of them. With cowboy Hopper as the backbone, cause lets face it: without him it would have been just a nice movie.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent movie, deserves to be better known
Review: It just needs to be said that the movie is what you could expect of having a master, Hopper, playing a character by another, Highsmith, while directed by yet another, Wenders. If you already read Ripley's game, see the movie to find an amazing picture of that odd world depicted by Patricia Highsmith.
Rating:
Summary: Win Wenders' masterpiece
Review: It's in many ways not fair to entitle this film as just a film noir.
I state that because , first at all remember. we are talking about of Patricia Highsmith , one of the most gifted minds in the north american literatute. If you analyze all her literaries works, as Strangers on a train,(Hitchcock) or A plenn soleil(Rene Clement), you'll find all the characters are envolved in a cosmical trick. It's true that the hopeless who surrounds establishes an anticipated fate in all their actions. But what Highsmith adds in every work, including the american friend is the lack of any kind of feeling or ethical consideration carried to a level that they become in models. I mean, it's very hard for us to find by instance, with a character as Mr. Rippley in any street of any city in the world. These characters are not common.
That's the most remarkable virtue in Highsmith and Wenders so Clement and Hithcock understood and exploited this item like few.
Wenders,one of the three kings of the german filmography in the seventies, (together with Fassbinder, Herzog, and Hauff), knew how to deal with that and make a clever twist in an age where the key works of the neo film noir, a genre that slowly was left and replaced by thrillers with little trascendence.
This film , in my point of view, made grow up to Dennis Hopper, not only as actor, but as a filmmaker. (Remember his best work as director titled Colors).
This film is eternal. And that means just one thing: it's a masterpiece. And obviously, it will resist the years and far of getting old, it will enrich us, every time we watch it.
Rating:
Summary: With friends like these. . . .
Review: One of the best adaptations of a Patricia Highsmith novel (*Ripley's Game*) ever filmed, and one of Wim Wenders' best movies, too. But, according to the commentary on this DVD, Ms. Highsmith was originally aghast at Wenders' treatment of the story -- it's a very loose adaptation -- and of the character Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper in a cowboy hat, a figure radically different from the suave manipulator in the book). As the years passed, she apparently grew reconciled to the movie on its own terms, and why not? -- the themes of the seductiveness of evil and of the abyss yawning below any "normal" person's life are rigorously limned in *The American Friend*. And Wenders brings some ideas of his own to this material, most notably the distasteful spectacle of a dominant world power and culture (e.g., the United States) crassly pirating the leavings of an older civilization (e.g., European): a way of life and thought, even a fraudulent version of it, is available to the highest bidder only. Above and beyond the intellectual stuff, the movie also happens to have several suspenseful stretches. Best example: the scene where the modest picture-framer from Hamburg (a never-better Bruno Ganz), having been roped into being a hitman due to the machinations of an insulted Tom Ripley, ineptly tails an American gangster through the subterranean Paris metro. Ganz needs the money for his family, but he's in bad health (a heart condition), and can barely stay alert while fighting anxiety attacks and physical exhaustion. Great stuff! Also of note is a prolonged and quite humorous assassination attempt aboard a speeding bullet train. (Hopper and Ganz share swigs from a flask and giggle at each other while guarding the murder scene -- the lavatory -- from discovery.) Wenders and his brilliant DP, Robby Muller, add to the atmosphere of malaise with the judicious use of pulpy color, blinding carnival-esque neon, and garish camera filters (blood-red skies at sunset and such). As for the performances: Hopper's Ripley really doesn't come alive until the last stretch, when he's given more time to work through his performance. Part of the problem is that the character -- in this movie -- is more of an idea rather than a fleshed-out human being. This is Bruno Ganz' movie all the way, and he makes the most of it. It's an unforgettable performance. It's a pretty unforgettable movie, on the whole. [The DVD's commentary, by Wenders and Hopper, is almost worth the price of admission on its own. It's enjoyable to listen to two old pros whose careers are full of accomplishments . . . one of which, of course, is *The American Friend*.]
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