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The American Friend (German: Der amerikanische Freund) is a 1977 neo-noir film written and directed by Wim Wenders, adapted from the 1974 novel Ripley's Game by Patricia Highsmith. It stars Dennis Hopper as career-criminal Tom Ripley and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Zimmermann, a terminally ill picture framer whom Ripley coerces into becoming an ...
Sep 28, 1977 · The American Friend: Directed by Wim Wenders. With Dennis Hopper, Bruno Ganz, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain. Tom Ripley, who deals in forged art, suggests a picture framer he knows would make a good hit man.
- (19K)
- Crime, Drama, Mystery
- Wim Wenders
- 1977-09-28
"The American Friend" lacks the same clarity and unsparing eye. It's deliberately murky, I suppose, in its tale of a criminal and personal triangle involving an American (Hopper) who becomes a middleman between a French gangster and a German picture framer.
Dennis Hopper oozes quirky menace as an amoral American art dealer who entangles a terminally ill German everyman, played by Bruno Ganz, in a seedy criminal underworld as revenge for a personal slight—but when the two become embroiled in an ever-deepening murder plot, they form an unlikely bond.
- Tom Ripley
Gradually succumbing to an incurable illness, Jonathan Zimmermann, a humble family man and picture framer, has a chance encounter with the amoral American expatriate and art dealer, Tom Ripley, at an auction in Hamburg.
A dying man reluctantly takes on a job as a hit man in order to have money to leave to his widow.