Highly Overrated But Still Good

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

It was ok. Kinda weird, kinda lame. Topher grace was a bad bad guy

"American Ultra" (2015) is a hilarious action comedy that plays on the "what ifs" of someone with a creative imagination. The film is about stoner, Mike Howell, played by Jesse Eisenberg, as he struggles to understand his newly activated abilities as a sleeper agent as the CIA tries to kill him. Nothing he knows seems to make sense anymore including the love of his life, his girlfriend, Phoebe Larson played by Kirsten Stewart. This film made me relive the crazy undercover agent thoughts I had as a child because it has very silly, childlike storyline that proves to be entertaining.Though this film has an enjoyable story, I couldn't help but notice the visual effects were a little hit and miss. For example, all the explosions and blood on the actors appeared realistic, but some of the impact splatters looked amateur. It seems almost as if all the effects budget was spent on the explosions, but not enough was put toward the digital effects. If the audience can get past those minor miscues, this film is worth viewing.

Saw it last night on TV, and it did make me think. The plot is obviously silly and filled with huge holes and contradictions. But this is part of the territory of the sub-genre it so evidently parodies. That is the secret agent who was trained into a super human killing machine, combined with the damaged start. In a way it's a satirical version of La Femme Nikita, with hints toward Jason Bourne and The Long Kiss Goodnight.So, that's what the movie parodies, but if it didn't have any satirical aim, the whole thing would've been a waste of time money and talent, and if one misses the satire, that what one is left with. Well I find it to be a rather pointed satire of the Bureaucratic new attitude to spying, in which people are assets and life or death are simple side effects of managerial decision.The entire thing is a very tricky combination, since the plot is riddled with problems, as I already mentioned. But Jesse Eisenberg delivers a fantastic performance as the stoner who's a killing machine and doesn't know it. Topher Grace is also brilliant as a bureaucrat who got promoted into a position of power he doesn't understand, and still looks at the world as one big administrative system which bureaucracy can control and manage. The others perform their roles all right, but without Eisenberg and Grace the whole construction crumbles as a house of cards. With the two of them it's a fairly enjoyable experience.

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.