Review of American Assassin (2017) by Shpostal — 14 Sep 2017

Hollywood never tires of these impossible odds tales of international "intrigue", with spying, ultra violence, poetic justice, yadda yadda yadda. And because this genre is so gentrified and cliched, it takes special writing and casting, not to mention direction to rise above the rest.

"American Assassin" does not. Vince Flynn is the author of the mass market paperback series that features Mitch Rapp, a seemingly indestructable intelligent agent in the vein of other fictional tough guys like Brad Thor's Scot Harvath, or Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan.

Had I recognized this as a Flynn book I probably would have chosen not to see this movie because unlike at least Brad Thor, who writes more interesting stories, I thought the one Flynn book I read was as cliched and hackneyed as James Patterson or a dozen other authors who churn out the same formulaic tripe book after book after book.

So we have Dylan O'Brien acting the Rapp character, and right away the movie starts to fail under its own premise. For my money, O'Brien is, for all intent and purposes, another Keanu Reeves style actor, all muscle, violence and the personality of a bar of soap.

Mitch Rapp is supposed to be the ultimate charismatic badass, striking fear into the foe and in theory at least somewhat emotional. Sorry. He just plain does not convey the personality his character is supposed to be.

The only saving grace is Michael Keaton, but he can't save this clunker, either. Even the premise of an inevitable nuclear explosion failed to pique my interest. It's political thriller done by a paint-by-numbers kit, and for all its supposed gun violence and the usual stereotypical terrorist behavior, one of the year's yawners.