Moviegoers that prefer the indie-styled comedies Eisenberg makes may abhor "American Ultra," while moviegoers who crave melodramatic massacres may loathe Eisenberg's casting. Mike spends more time behind the register illustrating a graphic novel about a simian in an astronaut outfit called Apollo Ape than ring up customers.
Indeed, we rarely see anybody venture into his store. When Mike is neither clerking nor drawing, he gets high on marijuana cigarettes that he rolls by hand for himself and listens to vinyl albums on his turntable. He shares his house with his equally lackluster girlfriend, Phoebe Larson Kristen Stewart of "Twilight" , who answers the phone at a bail bonding office. Mike suffers from delusions of paranoia, and he often experiences meltdowns. For years he has struggled to leave Liman, but he finds himself unable to realize his dream without grief and anxiety assailing him.
Essentially, Mike is a petty criminal who has gotten into trouble so often in his hometown that the local constabulary know him by his first name and keep an eye peeled for him. Meanwhile, he peeks at an engagement ring that he has gotten for Phoebe and wonders when he should spring the question.
Mike purchases his pot from a zany drug dealer named Rose John Leguizamo of "John Wick" who lives in a psychedelic house. Altogether, Mike doesn't look like he could harm a gnat. Meantime, at C. A headquarters, agent Victoria Lasseter Connie Britton of the ABC-TV series "Nashville" learns from an anonymous phone call that the top-secret Ultra program that she established to create sleeper agents is about to be liquidated.
Victoria's rival at the Agency, smug-minded Adrian Yates Topher Grace of "Predators" , has decided that the time is ripe to eliminate anybody involved with Ultra. Actually, the Ultra program has been shut down since most of the recruits went insane and died. As it turns out, one recruit survived and surpassed everybody's expectations. Imagine poor Mike's consternation when he wanders out into the parking lot and spots two guys rigging up a bomb to his automobile. Although the two guys are much better built than Mike, our hero kills both of them before they can blink.
He uses a spoon to stab one of his assailants in the neck and kill him. Mike has no idea how he has managed to perform such incredible feats.
He remembers an oddball woman that entered his store earlier in the evening and spouted some gibberish that puzzled him. Victoria Lasseter was the lady and she was trying to warn poor Mike about his impending doom at the hands of CIA assassins.
No sooner does the opposition try to exterminate Mike with extreme prejudice than he surprises them with his impeccable combat skills. At one point, pinned down behind a refrigerator in his kitchen by a barrage of gunfire, Mike slings a skillet above his head, pops off a round at it, and his bullet ricochets, and cuts down the trigger-happy soldier armed with an assault rifle!
Jesse Eisenberg definitely seems out of place in this blood and gore, tongue-in-cheek actioneer. Nevertheless, he handles himself competently in the close-quarters combat scenes. A villain plunges a screwdriver through one of our hero's hands, but Eisenberg clobbers his foe into submission with a hammer.
Meantime, Kristen Stewart doesn't lose her cool as level-headed Phoebe. Occasionally, she gets to whip a villain, but she gives another of her typically icy, inexpressive performances. In her best scene, she reprimands Mike for locking up Laughter in a jail cell, but forgetting to retrieve an automatic pistol he left behind.
Predictably, Laughter grabs the gun and blasts away at their fleeing backs. Aside from the splendidly orchestrated action scenes that resemble something Asian filmmaker John Woo of "Broken Arrow" might stage, director Nima Nourizadeh keeps surprising us with Eisenberg's audacious heroism and shocking sadism. Government, with all of its billions of dollars, secrets, and black ops facilities, is out of control and responsible for most of the Evil in America.
Columbines, collapsing federal buildings, shot up movie theaters and elementary schools were unheard of here in the s and s. Then our military secretly imported all the top war criminal medical "researchers" here from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. As AMER! CAN ULTRA documents, the products of the resulting and on-going mad scientist programs currently are running amok in our cities, towns, and villages with ever-increasing frequency.
This flick further hints that a government featuring such glaring incompetence and competing factions is now based primarily upon institutionalized insanity.
Mike Howell is in a dead-end job in Liman, a dead-end town, living in happily stoned penury with his girlfriend Phoebe. What he doesn't know because his memories have been wiped is that he is the sole successful product of a covert CIA programme to produce kind of super-assassin. Changes in management within the CIA result in newly promoted and somewhat megalomaniac Yates deciding to terminate Mike, as a result of which Victoria Lasseter, who headed the programme which produced Mike, travels Liman to speak the code phrase which activates him.
Mayhem ensues. American Ultra is not, as far as I can tell, based on a comic, but it definitely has a feel about it as if it had been. The closing animated title sequence uses Mike's would-be comic characters we see him drawing comics frequently , and the vibe of the film is similar to Wanted, RED, The Losers — outrageous all-out action against a background of gallows humour. This film is very violent, and often quite funny. It's also very sweary, with much of the swearing serving no other purpose than being swearing.
Use the script to serve the story, please. There is also something of a True Lies vibe to it, especially as regards the ending. The action is great, and Eisenberg deals with both the stoner and the action hero elements of his character very well. Stewart is good fun, too after the Twiglet movies I never thought I would use "Kristen Stewart" and "fun" in the same sentence.
But, for me, Topher Grace as CIA nutcase Yates was the most enjoyable character, constantly good humoured but always on the edge of a meltdown through frustration that what he sees as the obvious solution just wasn't happening.
This was good fun. The kind of movie that makes you say, "Meh I must confess that the recent trend of having movies with trashy stoner-type characters as the leads doesn't exactly interest me.
However, with this particular example, one having the premise of such a character finding out he is a CIA sleeper agent, I had to admit did have some possibilities, satiric as well as serious.
Despite the potential, I thought the movie fell significantly short. For starters, I was surprised to find out that there were a lot less attempts at humor than I was expecting.
Maybe that was for the best, because the little attempt at humor that there is in the movie I didn't think was particularly clever or all that amusing. As for the movie's serious side, I will admit that while I was never bored, I wasn't all that swept up with what happened.
The action sequences are okay at best, and the plot is pretty predictable. Also, the movie has a handful of cheap touches here and there that are distracting. In the end, the movie is mere background noise - it prevents sitting in an empty room from being excruciating for 90 or so minutes, but not much more. Jesse Eisenberg plays Mike Howell, a convenient store clerk hoping to propose to his girlfriend.
She is Phoebe Larson, played by Kristen Stewart. She is concerned with Mike's panics attacks and constant trips to the police station. Central plot regards the fact that Mike is a special agent whose memory was erased, which plays into his attacks. Connie Britton plays a CIA agent out to warn Howell that he is being targeted for death by her rival, played by Topher Grace who dispatches a group of sleeper agents to terminate Howell. Nima Nourizadeh previously made the mediocre and unfunny Project X.
Here he creates just as much chaos but much more originality, particularly during a climax that involves super agents, fireworks, tasers, and a most unusual proposal. Eisenberg plays off the confusion of Mike who, in self defence kills two men using ordinary items. Stewart as Phoebe represents many things to Mike whether it be girlfriend or caretaker but ultimately she proves resourceful.
Grace plays the snide and corrupt young CIA agent who authorized this faulty mission. Britton as agent Lasseter unleashes Mike's inner trauma in order to counter Grace's attack.
John Leguizamo plays Rose, a tattoo covered drug dealer paranoia friend of Mike's. The violence is extreme and over the top but its theme of government and identity drive this visually innovative catastrophe to a smokey finish.
FlashCallahan 6 September Small-town stoner Mike spends most of his time getting high, and writing about a monkey. A superhero monkey. What Mike doesn't know is that he was trained by the CIA to be a lethal killing machine, and when the agency targets him for termination, his former handler activates his latent skills, turning the mild-mannered slacker into a deadly weapon.
Now, the utterly surprised Mike must use his newfound abilities to save himself and his girlfriend from government agents trying to stub them out American Ultra, or the one where Max Landis threw his toys out of the pram is an oddity, and it's clear after about ten minutes why it's failed so dramatically at the Box Office. It's nothing to do with the casting, Eisenberg is always watchable, as is Stewart, and they have wonderful chemistry during their screen time.
It's just that the film doesn't know what it wants to be. It's like someone has put every genre going, put them in a bag, and got someone to pull one out and then say 'for the next ten minutes we will be doing an action film'. There are times when the film forgot it was a comedy and just went full on action, which is never a bad thing, but then the following humour feels too incoherent, and characters who were supposed to be funny, turn quite sinister for no good reason.
So all in all, it's an interesting concept for sure, but it's a mess, and for a film that's just over ninety minutes, it drags at times. Still, it's quite psychedelic in places, Leguizamo is the best thing in it even though he's playing a stereotype , and the end credits are great.
I was expecting a movie where Floyd from True Romance was part of Treadstone, but alas that would be too good to be true. Max, you will never be your dad dude If I have to be honest I was slightly disappointed by this movie.
After reading some reviews I expected a lot more from American Ultra. It's not that it is a bad movie but it for sure is not a movie I will remember. There are too much questions unanswered and too many things that are not very credible.
Okay sometimes it doesn't have to be but in this movie I thought it should have and it just wasn't. Apart from Topher Grace all the other actors were good or okay in their roles. To me he's just not good enough to play anything else. American Ultra is just good to watch once and then forget about it. However, now I have to say that I am slightly disappointed because surely he could have written this a lot better.
Another thing going against me while watching the movie is that American Ultra was in a list of "X best stoner movies" On the other hand, the character Mike was really awesome. Imagine a kind and sensitive guy with a super assassin training who just loves the heck out of his girlfriend. From the trailer I thought the film was going in a completely different direction. Unfortunately, after the original start, it went into the typical evil maniacal incompetent killers and the knight in shining armour saving his girl.
It even ended in a similar fashion to The Equalizer, an equally failed film. Bottom line: even if I don't mean to punish Landis for my own expectations, I couldn't really enjoy the film because of overused tropes that ended up tarnishing an original and fun idea.
While the action is gruesomely cartooned, the Writing doesn't hold after a while. But he's too well-trained and too high for them to handle. The protagonist's unreal physical strength amuses you, but later-on, it doesn't. I enjoyed some parts, particularly the initial madness. But, the last half fails. The predictability isn't the problem, its just that the idea gets exhausted after a point.
But, The Writing sags in the latter half. Nima Nourizadeh's Direction is hazy. Cinematograpphy is fine. Editing is crisp. Action-Sequences are brilliantly executed. Performance-Wise: Jesse Eisenberg is a joy to watch, yet again. Kristen Stewart shows a marked improvement over her previous works. She's more natural this time around. Topher Grace is an unconvincing baddie. Connie Britton is feisty. Walton Goggins hams. On the whole, 'American Ultra' can easily be watched once, despite its minuses.
StevePulaski 22 August It's marketed as the romantic "Pineapple Express" of sorts, boasting the amiable and easily relatable chemistry of Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, but cacophonous action sequences and a downright stupid plot prevent any kind of humor or remnants of wit to seep through such a lackluster story. For once, a stoner film, and potentially its actors and crew, have gotten so taken by their chemical reinforcement that they forgot to say, create, or do anything funny or insightful.
Mike smokes to get away from his sober self, where he falls prey to persistent panic attacks whenever he comes close to leaving his town, home, or general comfort zone. The two live together and share incredible romance whilst Mike works at a local convenient store. Meanwhile, we focus on a nearby CIA office where Agent Victoria Lasseter Connie Britton learns that her workplace rival, Adrian Yates Topher Grace , has taken over the "Ultra Program," a secret project she once helmed to create agents that operated like normal people but were really just pawns of the CIA.
When the project ostensibly flopped, she ordered the death of all the assets, including Mike Howell. Lasseter, however, discovers Mike is well, and winds up activating his senses, turning him into an unstoppable killing machine whenever he is in danger. The first instance comes in the parking lot of the convenient store where he works. Two guys are attempting to break into Mike's car, and as a result, Mike snaps and turns into a slick fighter with quickness that Bruce Lee would envy.
From there on out, Mike is essentially not his own man anymore, but a robot of the CIA. When Yates orders Mike to be taken out, upon realizing his abilities, he kidnaps Phoebe, resulting in Mike truly showing everyone what he is made of as a human and a CIA-controlled puppet of sorts.
Punches and thuds land with headache-inducing noise, the brutality here is on the verge of being artless and for the sake of being brutal, and little about any of these scenes is particularly compelling. Somewhat like a superhero film, you feel no real danger for Mike being that he's already programmed to be quicker than any of his opponents. With all this emphasis on the brutal, writer Max Landis forgets to make any of this funny, despite a premise ripe for jokes.
Perhaps this is a blessing, for Landis could've easily taken this film in the direction of bogus stoner jokes, but the lack of humor despite proved comedic talent such as Eisenberg and Grace seems almost criminal. However, to his credit, Landis does emphasize the relationship between Mike and Phoebe here, one built off mutual understanding of one another and unadulterated love.
Scenes between the two are quite touching and romantic, and provide a pleasant, if momentary, relief and pause between all of the violent nonsense. It's also worth noting that Topher Grace takes on the villain role for once. Grace, an actor I've long-defended for his ability to be goofy, serious, smug, believable, and charismatic, sometimes all in one film, does some strong, over-the-top comedy here, and, despite two solid leads, outshines everyone around him.
But at the end of it all, "American Ultra" suffers from the stoner mentality of "who cares, let's do it," resulting in a convoluted film that probably would've been better suited for an "intellectual" conversation with friends and some help than a ninety-six minute film. While this and "Project X" prove director Nima Nourizadeh can function in controlled chaos and romantic tendencies can indeed be strong amidst the senseless and inane, "American Ultra" can't rise above its own reckless and terribly asinine ideas and wallows haplessly in its own bong exhaust.
Jesse Eisenberg is the male lead,and is decent enough. Connie Briton and Topher Grace also star. KineticSeoul 26 December Okay so this is a movie that most people probably didn't know enough about to check out. I will just say, if you have seen the trailer it does give you an idea and it is what it is. I think the director knew they didn't have the resources to make a super action movie. So I guess they tried to just have fun along the ride, with some recycled ideas and lazy writing.
But again, they weren't trying to make a great action movie here, just something you can pop in, make some popcorn and have a decent time with. At least when it comes to the entertainment value. Even the acting in this is very comic book like, and a bit over the top and ridiculous. I guess that is because the actors knew they were in a non-realistic and ridiculous movie kinda like the movies "RED" and it's sequel to give you an idea.
Except with a way lower budget. Watching this movie was like watching a forgettable graphic novel on screen, so it does have it's perks although it's very low. When it comes to the premise, it has been done before but better except this goes in a more silly direction. Where the protagonist is this skilled person in his or her craft but doesn't know about it because of some plot device and regains these skills through experience.
Now the lead Mike Howell starts off as these weak and super clumsy guy, clumsy to the point where his character actually got a bit annoying. Few parts I was like "gosh why would you do that? Anyways so he is this pothead that works at a convenient store and draws comics about a monkey killing people. And he likes this one chick that he lives together with and they are on the run when people start trying to kill him.
And thus the journey begins where he is on the run with that chick while trying to regain his memories and killing off people that are trying to kill him and his girl. Yeah, just by reading the premise will give you a direct idea on what road this movie will be heading. It's actually quite a predictable movie. Overall, this is a flick that is alright if there is nothing else that you really want to watch and is just something to pass the time.
Not awful, but it's still a forgettable low budget popcorn flick. An error has occured. No Film School. By Jourdan Aldredge. October 14, The answer is yes Yet, here we are. ProVideo Coalition. Galaxy Smartphone. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. You Might Also Like.
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