The stoner comedy has a long history even if we don’t consider artistry in it. Unwarranted super agent espionage has also been done before as well. Now, in s mash up and in the remixing these days, why forget the two. American Ultra may be the answer to that question.
In fact, how can one even devise a plot giving rise to stoner comedy amalgam super agent who comes across as unwitting’’? The film written by Max Landes and directed by Nima Nourizadeh is a neo-genre film combining stoner comedy and unsuspicious proverbial super spy. Jesse Eisenberg is Mike Howell, a stoner who is oblivious that he is a subject of a forgotten covert government program. In case he is activated, he is able to kill people, not only with various weapons, but also with such things that nobody would ever think of as weapons.
All that Mike knew was that he was very much in love with his girlfriend Phoebe Larson (Kristen Stewart) and wanted to do everything in his power to make her happy. Sadly, he is a comparatively spaced-out man trying to obtain the relationship all wrong. Early on in the film he is able to take his cry-baby girlfriend phobe out for a holiday and nearly immediately after has endless problems with the airplane.
As it turns out, there’s this guy in the government, Adrian Yates (Topher Grace), who very much wants, or rather makes it so, that Mike is put to rest permanently by the Russians. In fact, Yates wants him dead so badly that he spearheads a full-fledged mission it’s hasn’t the authority for and to kill the person. The only thing that works in favor of Mike, who has no clue as to who Yates is, is that he has a defender from the government in Vicoria Lasseter (Connie Britton). Naturally, Mike doesn’t know her either – at least consciously – but she activates Mike so that he is able to protect himself against Yates’ goons.
Mike has this self-defense thing, this fanciful whack job, this unsanctioned mission goes down hill fast, there are secrets and really strange killers – including Walton Goggins’ psychotic Laugher – and small time drug dealer (John Leguizamo) caught in the crossfire. But of course this is Mike’s moment of filth too, where he is able to somehow take out the baddies with whatever prop makers have left behind for him to get even with. Even if it means he has to wait a few moments to properly contemplate what he’s about to do, Mike surprises himself by proceeding with whatever it is that he’s already set out doing.
Doesn’t it just sound like a very crazy, probably very entertaining action comedy? The trouble is that it never quite ascends to the ridiculousness that the premise suggests. The first series of kills – which, it has to be conceded, are very creative in American Ultra – makes it clear that nothing new will follow from that. Mike’s cool confident way of speaking and his ability to even once again surprise himself is won out very quickly.
Whereas in their own right there action sequences would most likely have become predictable long before the climax, American Ultra, jealously, makes it possible for the shock value of such scenes to be lessened from the outset. In the early portions of the film, a battered and bruised Mike recalls how all these states of sequence of events occurred first. It is then American Ultra goes even further insane by actually narrating, blind-folded what has happened but wherein the precious seconds where encoded events occur have been reversed. Therefore, when the audience is shown the location or object that previous activity has taken place, they know what is about to occur. The rewind technique does look very imperative and graceful, nevertheless, it really damages the film.
Lesser still feels the growing tension where the whole story arc with Yates on why Yates wishes to murder Mike and how he wishes to get away looks even more absurd than the concept of a stoner-killer played by Eisenberg. Grace is not especially believable as the young employer who has made up her mind to go ahead with this ridiculous undertaking, even though we have seen this actor play the role of a company man trying to do things differently before.
Yet, throughout the film, there is no sense of separation between Eisenberg and Stewart. And even though such a relationship may be quite difficult to believe in, whenever Mike is with Phoebe on screen, the audience would want them to survive the night somehow.
One difficulty in the making of a film that incorporates the elements of a stoner and an adventure in espionage is that the nucleus of character Mike and Phoebe can be placed in both the categories of character types, but not many others can. This leads to too many scenes feeling like they belong in one world or the other.
And then there are the scenes which really belong in either too. More or less, these epitomize pretty safe and mainstream movies. Tony Hale as a commiserating, bumbling agent caught between bowing to either Lasseter or Yates. Apologists are right, and he is funny in this film. And it is neither a stoner comedy nor an espionage action/adventure.
The Verdict
Instead Mike’s comic character, ‘Apollo Ape’ is shown in an episode at the end of the movie. Most definitely this is the best aspect of American Ultra. Who knows an Apollo Ape movie may come out and just as quickly serve its purpose then disappear like this one but all drama satisfaction has not been forfeited in American Ultra.
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