K-SCORE: 24
Director: Nima Nourizadeh
Writer: Max Landis
Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace
Spoiler Level: Moderate
“by the end, we know nothing more than what we learned in the trailer”
There are a lot of problems with American Ultra and maturity is the root cause of all of them. This story of a pothead living with his girlfriend in West Virginia suddenly activated as a CIA assassin fails to resonate on any level.
Only two of the characters even tries for any degree of depth: Mike and Phoebe, I guess named for the Friends couple. Both Stewart and Eisenberg gave oddly whiny performances, seemingly never having fun with anything even before CIA monsters descend to kill them. There is a lot of red streaked crying and lying around in bleak, dimly-lit settings. Mike has amnesia that is never cured, so the only chance for complexity he has is in his reactions to the confusing circumstances of the film and I guess the fact that he has a hobby of drawing bloody cartoons. None of it is even close to enough. Take any stoner film and transport the male lead from it into this narrative and you have either the same result or a better result. The filmmakers should have pushed for more depth with Mike by more often juxtaposing his mundane life (exemplified in moments like changing the lettering outside the cheap grocery store from MON to TUES) with his lightning-quick assassin techniques. Stoners are slow. CIA biological weapons are fast. There’s the premise. But they didn’t seem to understand it.
Phoebe simply doesn’t develop. She has a lie regarding the circumstances that is revealed, but never changes her attitude toward Mike or the world. And looking back at her behavior in scenes like the parking lot with two dead guys or the prison cell, her behavior is inconsistent and illogical given what we come to find out about her personal history.
All of the other characters are caricatures. Topher Grace plays an unusual brand of psychopath with an ill-conceived plan, almost no sense of tactics, and a blithe disregard for the accountability that is obviously coming his way. The “activator” woman could and should have been cut, never serving a greater purpose than explanation for a pathetic fraction of what is going on or incrementally advancing the plot, which could have been done other ways. Bill Pullman is a nonentity (actually a good role for Pullman) to the very end, as is Tony Hale. Everyone else - cannon fodder.
There are too few even implausible explanations for why CIA operatives have invaded this town to kill one harmless stoner. By the end, we know nothing more than what we learned in the trailer: that this guy is secretly a government-trained/manipulated master assassin. How, what, when why are never answered. Failures to consider details of circumstance really weakens the story regardless of any moderate potential extant in its premise. I did more thinking in a few journal pages on this premise than the writer and director seemed to have done in the film’s entire creation process. That makes it hard to respect.
Ultimately though the most unfortunate element is the missed potential for actual comedy. The film has a dark tone and presentation throughout, but it’s so unrealistic that it couldn’t qualify as a black comedy. It’s as if pot head mutilation of nameless men with cans of soup and dustpans was enough to make the filmmakers laugh. Not so much with me.
The film does have some redeeming features. The premise is amusing enough that they couldn’t help but stumble into some quality entertainment. There’s a long steadicam shot in the final fight scene that is both cool and a nice exploration of the principle and most familiar setting. Other action sequences are okay. And Eisenberg has a few well-delivered lines that made me laugh. His debating the right proposal moment is good as is his announcement to Phoebe over the store loudspeaker. And whoever designed the set for the best friend/drug dealer’s basement did an incredibly job. That is a unique place. Too bad it’s ruined by that uninteresting poisonous gas attack.
American Ultra is even less mature than the premise would make you guess it is. It’s entirely tasteless, tonally wrong, and tragically unpolished. It ended up disappointing me because buried deep there is potential. Stoner assassin? Sure. But the product I was delivered is really no deeper than the cartoon monkey at the end that rips people bloodily to shreds.
And shouldn’t Mike and Phoebe have gone to Hawaii? What the hell happened in reshoots resulting in that final scene?