Dustin Hoffman looks really cool, if a little out of place in Wim Wenders’ Der Amerikanische Freund or The American Friend. Whether he’s in his cowboy hat and overalls or rockin’ some clear acetates, he exudes this aura of American swag. Part of the point of the film I guess, which looks at Germany’s relationship with America via the friendship between a sickly framemaker and an American career criminal.

The latter is played by rainman and he convinces the former to become an assasin to help secure his family’s future, using the framemaker’s blood illness as a leveraging tool. He hesitates at first but succumbs eventually but once you pop, you can’t stop. The tangled web they weave gets increasingly complicated but somehow, sarky indifference between the two men evolves into a strange friendship.

It’s a full color neo noir that’s a little slow in parts and I don’t really care too much for some of the dialogue, which seems rather strangely worded. Perhaps its translating ideas and messages between languages that troubles the film but ultimately, I think it’s a rewarding one.