Disclaimer:

This movie is rated: R

Fair warning to anyone who may have stumbled across this post and is below the age of 17.

Although, if that is the case, a disclaimer is only going to strengthen your resolve to keep reading.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.

It’s not my fault!

Here we are with another movie I’ve never heard of before. I promise this won’t last long. Primarily because I enjoy giving y’all at least some backstory prior to the review. For those who love mysteries, I suppose you came to the right place. Although, don’t get your hopes up. In fact, this movie is rated even lower than the previous one we reviewed. Take that as you will.

Sure I didn’t dislike Legends of the Fall, but I couldn’t bring myself to like it either. If folks are even more split on this one, I have a feeling I will be too. Given the title, it sounds like a generic action thriller that serves as modern popcorn-fodder. Since Michael Keaton appears in the promotional material, it makes it feel even more manipulative. I’ve never been one to gravitate towards these kinds of movies, but I’ll admit they can surprise me.

Heck, one of my favorite movies is Terminator 2: Judgment Day which practically revolutionized the genre. Although, films that have released after it seem more focused on riding T2‘s coattails than innovating like Cameron did. From what I can tell, it seems like this movie will be no different. However, I will do my best to keep an open mind throughout this process. Every movie deserves a fair shot even if it is American Assassin.

With that said, let’s dive in. Hopefully it won’t be Michael Bay levels of patriotic in American Assassin.

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So…where do I begin with this? Your instincts would tell you, “at the beginning,” but it isn’t that simple with this movie. After watching this, it feels less like a movie and more like every Expendables, Mission Impossible and Steven Seagal movie crashed into each other at the speed of light. As you can reasonably guess, there were no survivors. Okay, so let’s just go over the basics.

We have our main character, Mitch Rapp (played by Dylan O’Brien).

The only thing you need to know about him is that he’s angry. That’s pretty much his whole character. Because, get this, our boy’s got a backstory straight out of a straight-to-DVD movie from the Syfy channel. There he was, on the beaches of Spain with his fiancée (played by Charlotte Vega), when suddenly they’re attacked by terrorists. In a plot that’s never explained and will never have any impact on the film from here on. Great.

By the way, where is this going?

Yep, so she dies and Mitch is left with a permanent case of constipation.

He’s basically Robert Pattinson’s Batman saying:

Also, I’m not saying it’s wrong to be upset if something like this happens to you. Let’s be real, if this happened in real life, it’d be absolutely tragic. Any pointless loss of life on this planet is soul-crushing and takes a long time to recover from emotionally. What I’m saying is, in movies, this origin has been done to death. Nobody cares anymore. So if you want your protagonist to stand out, this is not a good start because it’s way too generic.

That, and for people who do go through this in real life, they cope in very different ways. Movies always make it seem like folks never learn to move on after a tragedy. However, you’d be surprised at how many people experience something similar in real life and don’t become killing machines. In fact, you can find more cases of people focusing on peace and unity after something like this. There’s also more to be explored through that route in a film.

So yeah, Mitch becomes a vigilante. He seeks out terrorist groups to take them down from the inside. How well does that go?

For some reason, despite being a total pleb, Mitch garners the attention of the CIA. When I first saw this movie I was like, “Oh, are they gonna arrest him?” Well, they track him down along with the terrorist group he was trailing.

They bust in, but instead of arresting him (you know, like they should do), they want to recruit him. This coming from the mouth of the Deputy CIA Director herself (played by Sanaa Rathan)!

Your second mistake: letting him cook. What was the thought process behind this? I’d really like to know the logic that determined a dumbass vigilante should be a CIA operative. I’m inclined to agree with the terrorist that spoke with Mitch a few scenes ago.

So, that’s where we are. The rest of the movie is Mitch being trained by Stan Hurley (played by Michael Keaton) and going on missions. Who’s Stan Hurley? Some guy. If the movie doesn’t care, why am I supposed to? He’s got guns, though.

Why even bother continuing with this movie at this point? This is the question I kept asking myself once I got here, but the movie keeps going. For some reason. What does it accomplish? Little, if anything. In fact, there’s so little plot from here on out it’s not even worth going over. What’s there is so jumbled and disjointed that you can barely follow it outside of the training montage.

The movie cuts around from mission to mission without much rhyme or reason and it straight up becomes pointless action. A couple characters are introduced, but being as weakly constructed as our protagonist they’re not even worth mentioning. I will, though. That’s my job after all.

First is Annika (played by Shiva Negar).

She doesn’t become important until later in the film when it’s revealed that she’s an Iranian mole.

Although, she ends up coming back to the Light Side and kills herself.

If anyone cares at this point, I’d recommend consulting a physician. Yeah, so she was pretty much pointless. What, was she just supposed to remind us that there was a girlfriend in this? Yay. Moving on.

The second character is our…”antagonist?” His code-name is “Ghost” (played by Taylor Kitsch). I say “antagonist” in quotes because I really don’t know if he is or not. His motivation is shaky at best and, as you’d expect, he’s not even close to being properly built up.

This movie took so much time building up terrorists as the threat, and our big bad is DUI Topher Grace? “Ghost” is so un-intimidating that he doesn’t even scare Stan while he’s torturing him. That’s not a good sign. This man has Stan dead to rights, a smorgasbord of pain at his fingertips, and Stan just laughs at him.

Also, guess what our “antagonist’s” real name is:

Yeah. The person we’re supposed to be afraid of is named Ronnie. Are you kidding me?! Oh my gosh! Everyone run! Ronnie’s gonna catch us and tickle our tummies! You wanna know the best thing about Ronnie? He was one of Stan’s students. Why is he a terrorist now? Because he never followed Stan’s orders and got himself into a heap of shit. Also known as: the same thing Mitch does on every mission.

Let me get this straight, what did the Deputy CIA Director say again?

In the end, Ronnie gets dusted –

– the explodies go kablooey –

– and –

So that was American Assassin. Let’s see what the damage is.

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Given my tone throughout this review, you can reasonably predict that I’m not a fan. This isn’t even getting into other things I didn’t mention. The editing is atrocious because sometimes scenes will end abruptly without a proper resolution. Nothing is accomplished outside taking an hour and 45 minutes away from the audience they’ll never get back. Worst of all, the action isn’t even that good!

I’d be able to forgive it somewhat so long as the action was impressive. At that point I’d say to myself, “Yeah, overall it wasn’t good, but it was still fun to watch.” But I can’t even say that! The way they shoot action in this movie is so shaky and disorienting that it’s hard to get invested. The editing also cuts around the action so much that it makes it hard to follow. So the whole time I’m watching I’m just thinking “What the hell is happening?”

The unfortunate thing is that there was a legit opportunity to explore the true depth of countries’ atrocities. That, and how none of our hands are clean on a global scale. Of course, Mitch’s fiancée being murdered by a terrorist group puts a fine point on this. They even kinda start down this road a bit. Early on, they show videos of innocent Middle Eastern families affected by the American military:

It’s horrible and it needs to stop. It’s a great way to acknowledge that violence only incites violence. Mitch’s fiancée was murdered so he sets out to murder too. However, whether he knows it or not, this only creates more violently angry people. Something deep and poignant could’ve been explored here, but they shrug it off. What matters more to them? Telling red pill assholes that, if they’re angry enough, they too can kill people in their free-time. Apparently.

So yeah, I didn’t like it. For your money, I don’t recommend it either.

Hmm…1/5 judgy faces. I was originally going to give it a 1.5, but couldn’t bring myself to do it. If nothing else the production quality was pretty good, the acting was alright, and that terrorist’s face shouldn’t go overlooked. I can’t help but notice the release year, though. It came out in 2017, and Iranian nuclear discussions come up frequently throughout. Negative points for potentially feeding into President Trump pulling us out of the Iran Deal.

(He was probably gonna do that anyway, but I’m still not over it.)

(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)

(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)

(I’m just a [mostly] humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)

(Believe me, this is one I’m glad I didn’t make)