Review of American Ultra (2015) by Jeff B — 26 Aug 2015

More Ultra light than The Long Kiss Goodnight, this American tale rotates between action and comedy but just isn't edgy enough to kill it in either genre despite an interesting premise. Imagine a story that centers around an anxiety-ridden, marijuana-clouded ne'er-do-well who - unbeknownst to himself and nearly everybody around him - secretly proves to be a Candidate of the Manchurian kind, possessing ninja-like killing skills and top-shelf government training. Then, forget about half of that scenario because THAT movie never really arrives. Instead, moviegoers get American Ultra, the story of a pseudo-Lebowski that's anything but Big. The script by Max Landis (Chronicle) lights up some promising ideas but fails to take the audience to any real highs, choosing instead to snuff out any potential by filling the screenplay with formulaic tropes. When the "twists" get revealed, the already-in-the-know audience feels as if they've been lying in wait since Act 1 to yell "surprise" at a blissfully ho-hum plot point.

In this R-rated action-comedy, a small-town stoner (Eisenberg) gets marked as a liability and targeted for extermination, but it turns out that he's a sleeper agent who's too well trained for them to handle.

Under the not-so-assured direction of Nima Nourizadeh (Project X), the supposedly funny lines get laid on as thick as an '80s sitcom while the fight sequences get handled in a slapdash manner as lazy as the stoner at the center of this slice of Pineapple Excess. Unfortunately, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart actually hold a good degree of chemistry. Ultimately, the only other thing of value they hold is 99 pages of rolling papers, as that's the best that can be made of this half-baked script in its current form.

Bottom line: Bourne Obscenity.