The Bourne Intoxication
American Ultra (2015); 7 out of 10: American Ultra is a girlfriend movie. This does not mean it is a chick flick. It means it is a movie I watched because my girlfriend said, “Have you seen American Ultra?” I said I had never heard of it, and she said, “Oh, we have to watch this.”
Keep in mind that this is the same girlfriend who made me sit through Tammy. There were reasons to be concerned.
Even had I heard of American Ultra, I probably would not have rushed to find it on a streaming service. It stars Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, two actors I do not actually hate but do not tend to seek out on purpose. My exposure to Stewart consisted largely of clips from Twilight, while Eisenberg had made an impression through clips of his Lex Luthor. Neither constituted an effective recruitment campaign.
The spoiler-free setup concerns Mike Howell, a small-town West Virginia stoner whose modest life with his girlfriend, Phoebe, takes an unexpected turn when he discovers that he possesses some very specialized, and very lethal, skills. Unfortunately, the government knows considerably more about those skills than he does, and several people would prefer that his journey of self-discovery be extremely brief.
Basically, what if Jason Bourne regained his memory in West Virginia instead of the south of France? And instead of a clean-cut Matt Damon, he was Jesse Eisenberg wondering what the hell he had just smoked ?
You know what? I can hang my hat on that.
The Good
Once I wrapped my head around the premise, I found quite a bit to enjoy. This took some adjustment because American Ultra is a stoner action movie, and “stoner” is generally not an adjective that increases my interest in a film. I am not particularly enthusiastic about stoner comedies unless one of the characters is named Cheech, and even then results may vary.
But the Jason Bourne angle gives the marijuana something to do besides occupy ninety minutes.
There is an appealing absurdity to building a deadly operative around someone who does not look prepared to handle a moderately complicated customer-service interaction. The distance between Mike’s personality and his capabilities is the joke, but it also gives the action a useful hook. He is not merely fighting people. He is discovering, with understandable alarm, that he is very good at fighting people.
Max Landis’s screenplay deserves credit for finding a workable movie inside that premise. “What if Jason Bourne were a stoner?” could easily be a sketch that exhausts itself before the first commercial break. Here, it provides enough comic confusion and forward momentum to sustain a feature.
And despite my reservations about the leads, I became invested. You do not have to begin a movie as president of the Jesse Eisenberg fan club to enjoy watching his terrible evening unfold.
The supporting cast certainly helps. My good buddy Walton Goggins turns up, which generally improves matters. Topher Grace is always a pleasure. They even pull Bill Pullman out of cold storage for a scene or two, presumably in case the aliens show up.
Then there are the animated monkey end credits, which I loved. They threaten to be more entertaining than the movie itself, in that old Pink Panther fashion where the cartoon attached to the feature starts making a persuasive case for its own ticket price. It is a lovely way to send the audience home, although you do risk having them leave asking whether the monkey has an agent.
The Bad
The opening shows far too much of the movie’s hand.
We get one of those “How did I end up here?” beginnings, followed by a rewind so we can discover how everyone ended up there. I understand the impulse. Someone apparently feared that an audience might refuse to watch Jesse Eisenberg in West Virginia unless provided with advance evidence of substantial property damage.
But this is a premise that benefits from going in blind. Let us meet the apparently harmless stoner. Let us wonder what is wrong with him. Let the first display of his abilities arrive as a genuine surprise. Showing us where the evening is headed makes the early scenes feel like they are catching up to information we already have.
The film also requires a certain willingness to meet it halfway. On my first viewing, I spent some time adjusting to the kind of movie I was watching. On the second, with the Stoner-Bourne framework firmly in place, I enjoyed it considerably more.
That is a compliment to its re-watchability, but it also suggests that the opening could have done a better job introducing the movie instead of previewing it.
The Ugly
Once again, we have a spy movie in which the people at the spy agency keep trying to kill one another.
I have raised this issue before, and I will continue raising it until somebody in cinematic human resources takes responsibility. People join the CIA for good dental benefits. They are not going to keep showing up to work if a disagreement with management routinely ends with a bullet in the head.
This is a government bureaucracy. It is not the mob. There should be forms. There should be an unpleasant performance review. At the very least, there should be a mandatory training module before someone authorizes your execution.
And then there is John Leguizamo. I like John Leguizamo. My objection is not to his presence so much as the movie’s apparent belief that he is twenty or thirty years younger than he actually is.
Casting him as Eisenberg’s drug-dealer buddy stretches things, particularly when the performance leans into the sort of aggressively hip dialogue that makes you start doing mental arithmetic.
The man is a baby boomer. Bill Pullman is only about seven years older. One of these actors has been brought in to represent senior authority, while the other appears to have been issued a youthful wardrobe, Grizz and Dot Com from 30 Rock and told that nobody will notice.
In Conclusion
I liked American Ultra, and I liked it quite a bit more the second time around. Once I stopped resisting the words “stoner action movie” and accepted that I was watching Jason Bourne with a substantially different approach to personal grooming, I was all in.
Looking over my notes, I have apparently reviewed all five Bourne movies, and outside of the last one, I generally enjoyed them. Giving that formula a scruffy West Virginia makeover turns out to be a reasonably effective way of getting me to watch another.
The opening gives away too much, the CIA desperately needs an employee-retention program, and John Leguizamo might want to stop hanging around these kids. But the premise works, the supporting cast is welcome, and those monkey credits are a treat.
My girlfriend was right about this one. Best use of a spoon as a weapon since The Tick.
