Review: American Ultra

"Your teeth glow in the dark," Timothy Olyphant's Raylan Givens tells longtime nemesis Boyd Crowder during their dark night of the soul that was the dearly departed Justified's penultimate episode. Walton Goggins, who played Crowder for six seasons and The Shield's Shane Vendrell for seven ("Family Meeting," the show's final episode, still haunts), has one of the all-time great set of chompers. Goggins is first seen in silhouette in the stoner action comedy American Ultra; he throws his head back in maniacal laughter, exposing the teeth that shall soon be bashed out of his mouth.

American Ultra is keen on putting its characters in all sorts of situations that leave them the worse for wear. No one escapes unscathed. Not Topher Grace, whose power-tripping C.I.A. agent Adrian Yates is hell-bent on eliminating all traces of the Ultra program, an initiative which reprogrammed select individuals into superspies and assassins. Not the lovely Connie Britton (forever Friday Night Lights' Tami Taylor) as Victoria Lasseter, Yates' former trainer now underling, forced to go rogue to thwart his dastardly plans. Not Kristen Stewart as Phoebe, who functions as mother, girlfriend, and all-around protector to Jesse Eisenberg's underachieving, anxiety-ridden, continually high Mike Howell, whose travails will have him resembling the Elephant Man by film's end.

Mike, it turns out, is actually a sleeper agent of the Ultra program, recently re-activated by Victoria in order to fend off the mentally unstable assassins deployed by Yates to kill him. American Ultra's few kicks come from watching Eisenberg's loser slowly register what a highly-trained killing machine he is as he handily dispatches all comers with his martial arts skills and numerous conveniently available utensils and other household appliances. An orgy of blood splatter, broken bones, and intermittent explosions ensue.

What goes on is not particularly interesting. American Ultra, in fact, can be deathly boring. Director Nima Nourizadeh stages set pieces that combine casual violence and cheap laughs but are sometimes so messily executed that they come off as hollow and ponderous. Max Landis' disjointed screenplay doesn't help as exchanges are either cartoonish or unfocused. One could argue that the events and conversations depicted are exactly how Mike's stoner would experience it - rambling, directionless, randomly significant - but it makes for painful viewing.

On the plus side, Eisenberg and Stewart, who appeared in the far more enjoyable Adventureland, share a relaxed and lived-in interplay. One almost forgives the shoddiness of the film when they're together. Then there is Goggins, who elevates a character that is basically a poor man's Joker to one that could be viewed as a cinematic descendant to Blade Runner's Roy Batty.

American Ultra

Directed by: Nima Nourizadeh

Written by: Max Landis

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins, John Leguizamo, Tony Hale, Bill Pullman