American Assassin

photo courtesy of comingsoon.net

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW

     In the age of bold, unapologetic action thrillers, American Assassin is… like, alright, I guess. Based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Vince Flynn, American Assassin stars Dylan O’Brien, Michael Keaton, Shiva Negar, and Taylor Kitsch. Dylan plays Mitch Rapp, a man who trains to become an elite black ops agent after a terrorist cell murders his fiancé. Together with veteran Stan Hurley (Keaton) and his fellow agents, Rapp races against the clock to stop a renegade agent whose machinations threaten to yield catastrophic results.  

     American Assassin strikes me as a movie produced by people who don’t know how to play the market. The last couple of years have seen action movies go in some really interesting, fresh directions—that’s what audiences are demanding, after all—but somehow Assassin manages to be predominantly bland. It has neither the thrill of a Jason Bourne movie, nor the style of a James Bond, nor the edgy violence of a John Wick or an Atomic Blonde—hell, it doesn’t even court the controversy of something like Munich. Instead, it settles for generic, cardboard characters and action-genre clichés. In today’s market, that’s a movie’s death knell.

photo courtesy of maxim.com

     On a story level, there’s plenty to nitpick here, but I’ll keep it short: characters, characterizations, and motivations are frequently throwaway or transient. More fundamentally, the movie seems to be confused about what it wants to be. Is this a no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners brawl, or is it a character-driven story about revenge, loss, and moving on? American Assassin wants to be both, and it never strikes a good balance.

     But I don’t want to give the impression that Assassin is some kind of unmitigated disaster. It’s not. It’s just the kind of movie that works as long as you don’t expect too much from it. It may not amaze or surprise audiences, but it certainly ticks all the action/excitement boxes. There are other pros: a decent finale, plenty of gore (if you’re into that sort of thing), and a solid dose of ‘Murica for good measure. The problem is that we’ve seen it all before.

     FINAL VERDICT: American Assassin barely scrapes by, but the filmmakers are going to have to up their game if they expect Mitch Rapp to bear the weight of a new franchise. 

photo courtesy of variety.com