“All men are sinners…”

Sigh… OK, so even though he hasn’t been gone very long, George Clooney is back in “The American.” This time he’s apparently a Stateside assassin prowling Italy who must complete “one more job” and looks to get mixed up with his female target…

Where have I heard this plotline before? Oh, yeah: in every other heist or assassin movie ever made.

Plus, the trailer’s a bit of a mess. Heavy on piano chords hammering the drama into your skull and light on originality or coherent plot mechanics. It does, however, include a couple of terribly gorgeous overhead shots of curving roads and European cities at dusk, perhaps owing to director Anton Corbijn’s day job as a photographer.

I confess that I’m predisposed to get sucked in to any European-set, vaguely noirish set-up with old-school femme fatales flashing dangerous curves and sex-drenched line readings. But from the look of it, I’m guessing Clooney took this job on so he could sleep in his own Lake Como bed every night.

Focus releases it in September. Are you gonna go?

THR’s Matthew Belloni and Stephen Galloway sat down with Focus Features CEO James Schamus in advance of his receiving the Hollywood Reporter’s Indie Icon of the Year award up at the Sundance Film Festival Friday.

They covered a lot of ground, but among the moments that stand out of the interview is mention of a new project Schamus has just begun writing for his frequent collaborator Ang Lee (”Hulk,” “Lust, Caution,” “Taking Woodstock”). Schamus jauntily describes the unnamed material as “going back to the good old, tragic, suicidally depressing Ang!”

Joe Penhall is following the road to “Butcher’s Crossing.”

The screenwriter who adapted Cormac McCarthy’s novel “The Road” has been hired to adapt John Williams’ 1960 Western novel for Focus Features. The project is part of a two-year, first-look deal that Focus cut with Sam Mendes, who might direct.

Set during the 1870s, the adventure tale centers on a man who drops out of Harvard and heads west to the small Kansas town of the title. There, he joins the search for a great buffalo herd.

Mendes and his Neal Street Prods. partners Pippa Harris and Caro Newling are producing with Polsky Films’ Gabe and Alan Polsky.

Penhall, repped by Endeavor and the Curtis Brown Group in the U.K., also is working on the Fox 2000 adaptation “Deep Water” and an adaptation of his own play, “Landscape With Weapons,” for “Road” director John Hillcoat.

He also wrote the screenplays for “Some Voices” and “Enduring Love.”