American Ultra
August. 21,2015 RMike is an unmotivated stoner whose small-town life with his live-in girlfriend, Phoebe, is suddenly turned upside down. Unbeknownst to him, Mike is actually a highly trained, lethal sleeper agent. In the blink of an eye, as his secret past comes back to haunt him, Mike is thrust into the middle of a deadly government operation and is forced to summon his inner action-hero in order to survive.
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Reviews
I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.
Captivating movie !
best movie i've ever seen.
I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.
I really enjoyed this movie. It starts a little slow, but once the leading schlub discovers he's a superweapon, well, things get pretty entertaining, with lots of intense, crazy action involving guns, spoons, and frying pans.This is very much a movie that doesn't want to give you time to stop and think about the story. If you do stop you'll definitely see some issues; for example, the reason given to shut down the original program should still be a problem, but it's just ... not. That's so lazy.But as mindless fun goes, this is a really good example of it. It's also amusing with a surprisingly sweet romance at the heart of it. Torn between giving this a 7 or 8, but because of the less-than-sensible parts I'll go with 7.
Very good action thrill ride, with a somewhat unique protagonist. Don't know why critics didn't like it, but I give it an 8. Its not like the plot line is unique, granted. But what were they looking for, Bullit? Citizen Kane? The flick came short of a million on covering its costs with box office, so sadly there probably wont be a sequel. Good acting performances from Eisenberg and Stewart. Its worth the watch, I don't care what anybody else says.
American Ultra is a play on the real UK Ultra program where the army tried to create a super soldier using mind control techniques, like LSD. I like these genre crossing movies. The secret agent who doesn't know he is a secret agent due to mind control then becomes activated is, ala "Long Kiss Goodnight", well trodden road. The evil government agency, the CIA in this case, sealing a town off for some nefarious purpose is also one of the motifs, ala the "Crazies". recycled. Stoner slacker guy, Mike Howell, with no middle class ambitions is a good all around comic relief character, played by Jesse Eisenberg with his devoted girl friend played by Kristen Stewart is a good pair. He works at a convenience store by himself ala "Clerks" and draws some silly comic about a super ape he hopes to get published. That duo made the movie, because neither of them are action hero types, quite the opposite for Jesse Eisenberg. He is a good character actor for the nerdy neurotic picked-on type, and a like-able sort of guy. Kristen Stewart is OK too, but she got a swelled head from all those vampire werewolf movies she starred in and got her rich. Then there is John Leguizmo who played his usual latino punk hustler role that was unimpressive. Topher Grace was good as the bad CIA agent who wanted to kill poor conditioned to not know who he really is Jesse, aka Mike Howell. Then they even had Walter Goggins replay his psycho killer role as a fellow American Ultra agent suitably named Laugher, he is a laughing psychopath. who was a psycho before he was put in the Ultra program. The over the top, impossible violent action scenes are no more excessive than the norm these days. To be honest, we can use less of that. But that is what brings in the crowds. The movie was nothing awesome but what made it good was that it had a soul thanks to the lead couple. It wasn't as good as "Super", which broker every movie conclusion convention, so it really doesn't rate camp-cult status. The ape cartoon interludes are interesting but sort of lame as well. But it is a pretty interesting and watchable flick and is much better than the comic book Marvel DC run of the mill product that this crosses genres with.
Stoner and slacker Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) spends his days getting high and writing comic books, but what he doesn't realise is that he is actually a sleeper agent who was part of an experiment by the CIA. When Howell is targeted for elimination by the CIA, his handler Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) decides to 'activate' him much to the annoyance of her colleague Adrian Yates (Topher Grace). With the CIA and their top agents hunting him down, Howell must use all of his skills to the best of his ability in order to survive...American Ultra is a mishmash of films with elements of The Manchurian Candidate, The Bourne films and practically every stoner comedy in existence. With the right handling this could have been great, but it's all rather ho-hum to be honest...I'm not generally a huge fan of stoner type comedies because often they are rather lazy and repetitive (there are some exceptions such as Harold and Kumar), and in this respect American Ultra is fairly weak as well. The stoner dialogue between Eisenberg and Stewart is lazy and uninspired and pretty dull - there's only so many times that you can hear words 'Dude' and 'Man' in the same sentence before it starts to become irritating. I presume the stoner aspect of Howell's life is the 'comedy' aspect of the film, but to me none of it was funny and as I mentioned it was more annoying than anything.Even taking out all of the lame stoner dialogue and focus on the story itself then the film still isn't that great; for a start I found that a lot of things here weren't very well explained or didn't make much sense. For example Howell is a sleeper agent and the CIA have targeted him for elimination and this seems to be based on the fact that Howell wants to leave the area?? Now presumably the reason for this is that the CIA may be worried about losing him or perhaps they want to keep an eye on him in case he somehow regains his memory (this is all speculation as nothing is really explained). I just didn't understand why he needed to be killed? Even if he moved out of the area, what difference would it make to the CIA as Howell didn't know he was part of an experiment nor did he know anything about his past life. Alternatively, if they wanted Howell to remain in the area why not put a directive or program in place to suppress his desire to leave? I know I'm throwing up a lot of scenarios and problems, but when a narrative is as vague as this one it feels as though you have to work everything out for yourself...Still it isn't all bad Eisenberg and Stewart make a likable enough couple (even though the former is annoying and is basically the same as he is in every film). Stewart on the other hand is much better; her performance is more natural and believable and she does give the picture a slight lift - also to her credit she didn't annoy me anywhere near as much as Eisenberg. The supporting cast are all OK, but I can't imagine that this film will really be the high point of anyone's career. That said though, some of the action sequences are pretty good and the film has just about enough energy to make it watchable, but when the chips are down there aren't enough funny moments for the 'comedy' aspect of the film to work and the narrative is a little vague and isn't interesting enough to make it a particularly involving experience. It passes the time, but that's about it.