Review: American Ultra

Jesse Eisenberg is Mike, a barely functioning, super-anxious stoner who somehow has managed to get himself a faithful girlfriend in Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). However, an encounter with CIA agent Victoria (Connie Britton) has Mike coming to the realisation that he’s a long dormant sleeper operative from a project that the CIA now want to close down, putting guys like Mike out to pasture. That’s why Victoria has come to see him, she has a concscience and wants to protect Mike, who she was basically in charge of in the first place. Now Mike and Phoebe are on the run from Victoria’s arsehole CIA colleague and a giggling assassin (played by Walton Goggins). Bill Pullman turns up late as another spook.

I can see why this 2015 hipster/stone spy movie from director Nima Nourizadeh and screenwriter Max Landis (who previously scripted the above-average “Chronicle”) didn’t go over all that well with critics. To be honest, it’s a little too weird to the point that it’s slightly off-putting at first. A hybrid of Richard Kelly (“Donnie Darko”, “Southland Tales”), David Lynch (“Blue Velvet”, “Mulholland Drive”), and “Scott Pilgrim vs. The World”, it’s a mixture that I personally found interesting enough to give a good score to, but it’s very much on the low end of such a score.

I must admit, it took me a while to get into the film. That’s because, like, 11 minutes in, like, I felt like, if I like, heard the word like one more time, like, I’d like have to go break some fucking skulls. Like. However, Jesse Eisenberg is unquestionably perfect here as a barely functioning, barely competent human being. Eisenberg could’ve taken this to a pretty mannered level that might’ve been hard to take, but he somehow manages to humanise this poor guy through the fog. You actually care somewhat about what happens to him, partly due to the fact that both the characters played by Kristen Stewart and Connie Britton also care about him, but also because he was an unwitting participant in the CIA’s plans. That shit’s just not right. Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart also have pretty good chemistry (they’ve worked together before, of course), better chemistry than Stewart seems to have with herself. In fact, while I still feel that Stewart isn’t an actress and she merely turns up and reads her lines, at least here she gives her least sucky performance since “Panic Room”. I’m still not sure why someone so painfully shy and uncomfortable in her own skin has chosen acting as a profession, but I have few complaints about her in this. Connie Britton is fine as always, and Walton Goggins is an absolute scene-stealer as a cackling assassin. I usually find Goggins to be very much like a young Bruce Dern, but here he’s unmistakably inspired by a young Richard Widmark and the film comes alive whenever he’s on screen. He’s on a completely different level here, probably the best performance I’ve seen from him to date.

Less effective is an unfortunately mannered John Leguizamo, but the fact that he’s an illegal fireworks dealer was cute. The real problem is a completely miscast Topher Grace in the worst performance of 2015 by a known actor. He’s not remotely menacing or credible, and is completely unrestrained and amateurish. Like Goggins, he’s on a whole other level, just not a good one in Grace’s case.

A good movie? Not quite, but close enough to get a good score from me. This is a seriously off-kilter spy/comedy that takes a helluva lot of getting used to. An incredibly poor performance from Topher Grace, meanwhile, nearly torpedoes the whole thing, and Kristen Stewart isn’t anything to write home about, either. Jesse Eisenberg, however, is absolutely terrific as is Walton Goggins in support. A big step up from Nourizadeh’s previous turd “Project X”, the film itself is watchable enough, but uneven and definitely not for everyone.

Rating: B-