American Ultra (2015)
Directed by Nima Nourizadeh
Mike is an unmotivated stoner whose small-town life with his live-in girlfriend, Phoebe, is suddenly turned upside down. Unbeknownst to him, Mike is actually a highly trained, lethal sleeper agent. In the blink of an eye, as his secret past comes back to haunt him, Mike is thrust into the middle of a deadly government operation and is forced to summon his inner action-hero in order to survive.
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It is just one of many sly cinematic homages that range from "True Romance" to TV series "Chuck" in a film that is unsuspectingly sweet in the face of blood being copiously strewn across the screen and protagonists Mike and Phoebe getting progressively banged-up as their night from hell comes to a head.
One that echoes the lovey-dovey anti-hero sentiments of True Romance while wholly embracing the frivolous and preposterous action of True Lies.
It uses quirky, punk rock energy to tell a lovers-on-the-run story that aims to hit the sweet spot Tony Scott's True Romance nailed so eloquently back in 1993.
With its affecting central romance enduring unimaginable violence from outside sources, "American Ultra" has a little drop of "True Romance" in its DNA.
It's kind of a cross between Jason Bourne and Jay and Silent Bob, with more than a little "True Romance" thrown in for good measure.
American Ultra isn't True Romance by a long shot (or one point-blank in the face, for that matter).
Max Landis’ script is reminiscent of the one his father, John Landis, did for “Into the Night” in 1985.
At its best, Max Landis’s script channels some of the anarchic energy of Into the Night (which his father, John, directed), but too often American Ultra looks like 17 different movies thrown into a body bag and left to duke it out.
The story of a stoner (Jesse Eisenberg) who discovers he’s a deprogrammed CIA operative and ends up fighting for his life after the agency descends on his small town, it’s a loud, ugly, slapdash combination of action movie, pot comedy, criminal romance, and conspiracy thriller — a mash-up of The Bourne Identity, The Big Lebowski, and Natural Born Killers, and about as lumpy and ungainly as you’d imagine such a stew would be.
It aspires to Natural Born Killers, but has barely enough competence to get close to something like Feeling Minnesota.
The couple’s love story, tested so severely by seemingly undefeatable forces, serves as binding thread for “American Ultra,” possibly the bloodiest love story since “Natural Born Killers.”
It’s a weird, wacked-out, sometimes wonderful mash-up of stoner comedy, spy-conspiracy spoof and hyper-violent teen-romance fantasy—think of Eisenberg and Stewart’s characters several years down the road from their 2009 collaboration Adventureland , caught between The Bourne Conspiracy and Pineapple Express , and spattered with Oliver Stone’s bloody overspray from Natural Born Killers .
From “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” to “The Manchurian Candidate” to the Jason Bourne franchise and now Nima Nourizadeh’s deliriously derivative and irresistible “American Ultra,” these unwary secret agents are drawn from their sleeper cells and discover a talent for killing with impunity.
It dates back (at least) as far as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), and you may also remember it from popular action flicks like The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) and The Bourne Identity (2002).
Because let's be honest: We're not covering any new ground here; sleeper agents have appeared in movies since The Manchurian Candidate, and stoners have a rich cinematic tradition dating back to Reefer Madness (fine, Easy Rider).
The film is written by Max Landis, son of horror-comedy alchemist John Landis, and it playfully stuffs in references to The Terminator, Blade Runner, The Manchurian Candidate, the Bourne movies and other favorites.
Since the blockbuster success of The Bourne Identity and its sequels (plus The Manchurian Candidate a generation earlier), the concept of a brainwashed agent/assassin has become the hoariest of action tropes.
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The story of a stoner (Jesse Eisenberg) who discovers he’s a deprogrammed CIA operative and ends up fighting for his life after the agency descends on his small town, it’s a loud, ugly, slapdash combination of action movie, pot comedy, criminal romance, and conspiracy thriller — a mash-up of The Bourne Identity, The Big Lebowski, and Natural Born Killers, and about as lumpy and ungainly as you’d imagine such a stew would be.
Even Jeff Bridges’ Dude in “The Big Lebowski” becomes driven by a quest to retrieve his stolen rug.
Just as The Big Lebowski transformed the Philip Marlowe archetype into a bumbling stoner, American Ultra turns Jason Bourne into Jason Bong.
A manic and shirtless John Leguizamo referencing Michael Crichton’s The Andromeda Strain will earn your laughs.
Director Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) and scriptwriter Max Landis (Chronicle) could have gone for the laughs in this inhaling assassin scenario, paying homage more to Pineapple Express than The Bourne Identity and its imitators.
It may lose its thread towards the blood-spattered finale, but the two effective leads spearhead a fast, amiable comedy that never outstays its welcome, and will be great fun for fans of films such as 2008's Pineapple Express.
What begins as a clever action-comedy a la “Pineapple Express” or Eisenberg’s earlier “Zombieland” devolves into a standard shoot-’em-up, with gore splashed around to distract us from the dearth of wit.
We've seen some passable entries since, including Grosse Pointe Blank (hit man goes to his high school reunion), and Pineapple Express, which brought the strain of weed into the mix.
It’s a weird, wacked-out, sometimes wonderful mash-up of stoner comedy, spy-conspiracy spoof and hyper-violent teen-romance fantasy—think of Eisenberg and Stewart’s characters several years down the road from their 2009 collaboration Adventureland , caught between The Bourne Conspiracy and Pineapple Express , and spattered with Oliver Stone’s bloody overspray from Natural Born Killers .
This stoner/secret agent mash-up of The Bourne Identity and Pineapple Express promises cross-generic thrills and doesn’t skimp on crunchy violence, but comedy is in far shorter supply.
And now it makes sense that “American Ultra” takes place in a town called Liman, W.V.—perhaps it’s an homage to Doug Liman ’s “ The Bourne Identity ,” with some druggy nuggets of one of the director’s earliest films, “Go.”
The movie compares favorably with Doug Liman ’s “Go,” another late-night waffle run of a movie that didn’t let the modest budget and lack of big set pieces kill the momentum.
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Quentin Tarantino didn't originate the method of blending extreme violence with dark comedy but his early films (especially Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction ) popularized it for today's generation.
Quentin Tarantino didn't originate the method of blending extreme violence with dark comedy but his early films (especially Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction ) popularized it for today's generation.