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It’s artistic without being pretentious, thoughtful, and elegiac without treading into monotony, beautifully acted without drawing too much attention to its stars.

As a hitman on an assignment in a far-flung locale, [McShane's] as good as he’s ever been, exuding a heft and danger that typifies this understated and affecting genre effort.

American Star is a nice surprise. To hear it described, its premise sounds almost ridiculously predictable: Ian McShane as an old hit man on his last assignment. But the movie turns out to be a serious work that goes to unexpected places.

This is an unusually intelligent and purposeful movie that doesn't say much, but is full of feeling.

There's no doubt that it's been a blast to watch McShane ham it up in the John Wick films over the last decade, but American Star offers a nice counterpoint, showing just how good the actor can be when given a role as layered and engrossing as this one.

Despite an oddball taste for wide-angle lenses, the director, Gonzalo López-Gallego, can sustain a solid slow burn. Still, neither McShane nor the scenery can take the rust off the basic scenario.

The director’s most rewarding decision: simply trusting McShane to summon the mood.

Everything in American Star hinges on McShane's intuitive performance that rejects the obvious and embraces ambiguity.

Director Gonzalo López-Gallego creates a strong frame around the characters in both visual and narrative terms, while a lovely score credited to Remate, mixed with well-chosen soundtrack cuts, creates a limpid poignancy.

I guess it claims to demonstrate how repetitive and routine the lives of professional assassins can be (yawn), but in my opinion, movies about them have an obligation to be juicier and more consistently fascinating than American Star.