I'm guessing that the idea for "American Ultra" looked better on paper than what eventually ends up on the screen. Jesse Eisenberg and Kristin Stewart are good actors and they have enough charisma that you care what happens to their characters. However, the push-pull between comedy and heavy violence doesn't mesh, making the tone uneven. The screenplay employees a questionable book-end structure. It begins with Mike (Eisenberg), bloody, bedraggled and in chains, in an interrogation room. Most of the story is then presented in flashback. There's no particular reason why this approach is used, but it reveals that Mike survives, resulting in little tension throughout the movie. Even more confusing is the decision to rewind events at the start of the flashback so we catch glimpses of key moments before they happen. Again, why? And the concept of an ordinary person being an elite covert agent awaiting activation is no longer a fresh idea. I realize that most movies ask the audience for a 'willing suspension of disbelief,' but the screenplay suggests that Yates (Topher Grace), a midlevel CIA manager, is able to carry out rogue assassinations without oversight and that he can employ psychopaths to do this. Really? "American Ultra" is pretty awful.
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