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Wim Wenders pays loving homage to rough-and-tumble Hollywood film noir with The American Friend, a loose adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel Ripley’s Game. 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. Filmed on location in Hamburg and Paris, with some scenes shot in grimy, late-seventies New York City, Wenders’s international breakout is a stripped-down crime story that mixes West German and American film flavors, and it features cameos by filmmakers Jean Eustache, Samuel Fuller, and Nicholas Ray.
Jonathan Zimmermann (Bruno Ganz), a German art-restorer, is dying of a rare blood disease. Despite his illness, the happily married Jonathan does his best to live each day to the fullest with his wife and child. But when cunning American gangster Tom Ripley (Dennis Hopper) learns of Jonathan`s sickness, he convinces the dying man - deeply concerned about his family`s financial future - to work as a hit man for a big payoff. Will Jonathan get in over his head by making a deal that could ruin what`s left of his life.
Dennis Hopper