Review of American Assassin (2017) by Phillip R — 14 Aug 2017

Minor spoilers below, but don't waste your money anyways.

Saw a free pre-screening at Alamo Drafthouse in Houston. My wife and I were looking forward to this movie because it co-stars Michael Keaton. The fact that the film opens in a month and I still haven't seen any televised trailers should have prepared me for low budget non-sense. The first 5 minutes of the film are pretty good--very visceral. After that it is absolute garbage. The pacing is terrible and the story requires the viewer to suspend ALL disbelief.

The worst part is that this movie is as cliche as cliche gets and they still managed to get it all wrong. It's a spy(ish) movie with fighting and car chases. You'd think they could get that right since it has been done a million times before...false. The one major car chase is filmed from the inside of the car or from about 2 feet off the rear bumper. The fight scenes are mediocre at best. If you want to see a better-in-every-way spy movie, go see Atomic Blonde.

But hey, at least it was free.