Review of American Assassin (2017) by Kevin K — 15 Sep 2017

"American Assassin" is a typical action film: spies, terrorists, guns, and blood. Unfortunately that is all the film delivers. Running just shy of the 120 mark, "American Assassin" never develops its characters. It turns out that this would be the films downfall as "American Assassin" never reaches its full potential. In the end, "American Assassin" is a stale spy thriller that does not bring anything knew to the table.

The film begins with Mitch Rapp (Dylan O'Brien) is spending some quality time with his long-time girlfriend on a vacation at the beach. As he confesses his love for her, he proposes to her. Among getting some celebratory drinks to share with the love of his life, a group of terrorists begin killing the vacationers ultimately ending with Mitch crawling to the corpse of his now dead fiance. 18 months later, Mitch is a gun wielding, knife throwing, brutal punching vigilante who wants to his revenge on the terrorist cell for the death of his loved one. He praises his allegiance to the organization and is eventually brought into the same room as their leader. Couple of bullets and few explosions later, Mitch is taken by the CIA and becomes a part of a secret operations team led by former NAVY SEAL, Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). It does not take long for a rogue operator known as Ghost (Taylor Kitsch) to appear on the team's radar after taking an obscene amount of plutonium from Russia to build a nuclear device. The film then becomes the beat em up action sequences you expected.

Unfortunately, what I just wrote was probably the length of the script. Amazingly, "American Assassin" is a close two-hour long film with no character development. As the movie progressed, I began to dislike Mitch more and more. He is a brutal character with little dialogue that does not include the words "die," "kill," and vulgarity. In real life, I am sure the CIA would have gotten rid of this guy after failing to follow the orders of a team leader. Even when he is on a mission, he is brutal and has no control. While this film does not follow the "realism" aspect of spy thrillers by any stretch, his demeanor was still brutal and hard to feel for. When bullets are not flying, the characters try to sound emotional and likeable but fall flat. In one particularly laughable scene where Mitch is shown teary eyed with another character as an attempt to have an emotional connection with one another, it turns into beat em up scene within five seconds. It felt rushed in a runtime that should not be. Add that to a script that is as poorly written as a 5th grader's English paper, and you get a poor storyline with one dimensional characters.

The seller is supposed to be the intense action sequences, where the film is supposed to shine. Too bad that the action sequences are nothing noteworthy. Again the lack of development of the film's characters hurts the action sequences. The film could have been something thrilling but the characters - especially Mitch - are too underdeveloped to root for in these scenes. What you get are action sequences that are as redundant as the torture scenes in the "Saw" series.

"American Assassin" falls into the spy thriller genre with nothing special to keep it afloat. I would not waste two hours on this film because - quite frankly - there are better ones out there with characters that are fully fleshed out and can root for.

Grade: F.