American Assassin

So I recently watched the new American Assassin movie, starring Dylan O’brien and Michael Keaton. And if I ignore the fact that my high-end reclining seat was broken and that the employees of the theater made me move seats, not once, not twice, but four separate times while the movie was rolling, I had a really good time.

Overview:

Overall, the movie was phenomenal. I found O’brien’s acting to be pleasantly and surprisingly good. And I was worried about this. I have followed the actor closely and fell in love with the character he played on Teen Wolf, but I have seen the difficulties of transitioning from television to movies and this is O’brien’s first movie. (Yes, I know he was in Maze Runner, but I’ve seen it and cannot consider it a movie.) But the actor did surprisingly well at creating a believable character who was not only entertaining, but genuinely tugged at my heart strings (what few I have left.)

Another great addition to the movie was Michael Keaton who played the mentor roll, Sam Henley, in the film. The action scenes were amazing. You could tell that they spared no expense creating these sequences. From explosions to car chases the movie certainly kept me engaged and entertained for the full 1hr and 52mins.

Furthermore, I loved the gritty realism that the writers made in the film. They ignored the usual tropes that I see in action movies, like slicing your throat (which is incredibly difficult to do) or having chloroform knock somebody out within seconds (because it really takes quite a bit of time). Instead, they critiqued these inaccurate tropes and demonstrated proper form. Well, until the very end, where logic goes to the wayside. Furthermore, characterization was a little lacking in some areas, especially for the villain of the story, played by Taylor Kitsch.

My Recommendation:

So if you haven’t seen the movie and you love gritty action movies I would definitely go see it. In my opinion it’s worth the money to see it. However!!! This movie is not for children. There are some very bloody scenes that made me gag in disgust, as well as frequent use of explicit language. It has intense sequences of violence. Please take this into consideration.

Now for a more detailed description for those who aren’t afraid of minor spoilers. WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD:

 Like I said, the movie was quite entertaining. Mitch Rapp was quite believable. I believed that he grieved for his dead fiancée and I believed that the character snapped, his mind twisting because of it. You see him kill people in gruesome ways, but I personally felt like he could have done it.

Furthermore, I enjoyed how Sam Henley strayed from the stereotypical mentor; he was constantly degrading and rude to all of his mentees. Even his inspirational speeches had a negative tone to them. And even by the end of the movie we find Keaton’s character giving into a rash decision. It was enjoyable to see the tired old tropes be broken.

That is not to say that the movie didn’t have its problems…

The movie starts off with Mitch Rapp and some unimportant women that he proposes to. Long story short, everyone gets shot including Rapp’s new fiancée, who dies before his eyes. Which might have been a touching seen… if I cared about the fiancée at all. I didn’t; there was no character development, no sweet moments were shared. Nothing. This was quite frustrating given the fact that most of the story revolves around Rapp’s loss of his fiancée driving him to go on a killing spree.

Another person lacking character development entirely was the villain, Ghost (played by Taylor Kitsch) We find out that Ghost was a former pupil of Henley, that he hated the navy, for some unknown reason, and that he’s trying to kill basically everyone. That’s it. I was given nothing. Characters need development! That is a vital part of every story. Without developing the characters, the audience cannot care about them. And that is exactly what happened here.

Again, I must bring up the realism. And I normally wouldn’t bring this up, but as I said, the movie focuses on realism… until the very end. Ghost gets a nuclear device and after shooting a bunch of people in a metal room around the nuke (Ummm, anyone heard of richochet?) he takes the bomb to kill a bunch of US Navy ships who are for some unknown reason off the coast of Rome. He gets overpowered, obviously, and you expect for Rapp to try to disarm the bomb. No. He doesn’t even try. Henley tells him to dump it in the ocean, so that’s what he does. A nuke exploded in the ocean. Not okay. One, they entirely messed up that ecosystem. It is completely and utterly destroyed. We have no idea how that may affect the overall environment of the world. Second, there would be a major rippling wave. The movie did show this to a minor degree, causing one maybe two ships to capsize. But a nuke exploded. More than two ships would have been knocked over by the resounding wave. Plus, it was right off the coast of Rome. The city would be hit with a giant wave, now laced with radioactivity. Why didn’t they mention any of this in the movie?

Despite the negativities that I mentioned, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. The action sequences were engaging and the main characters had amazing acting and character development.