American Ultra

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart were great together in Adventureland, so stay home this weekend and rent that instead.

In American Ultra, Eisenberg stars as Mike Howell – a stoner with severe anxiety issues who lives and works in a small West Virginia town. While he doesn’t have much, he does have the love of his life, Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), who seems to stick by him no matter what.

One day, Mike is attacked at the grocery store where he works, but, instead of becoming a victim, he shows an unbelievable particular set of skills giving him the ability to inflict great violence. Mike is Jason Bourne and Liam Neeson all rolled into one!

That’s because Mike, unknown to him, was part of a top secret CIA program to create super soldiers, and a rising star at the agency, Yates (Topher Grace), wants to eliminate our goofy stoner to promote a different program.

Does Mike have a chance against the CIA tough guys coming after him?

American Ultra is a mess. Director Nima Nourizadeh and writer Max Landis can’t find the right tone in almost any scene.

On the one hand, American Ultra is supposed to be a Bourne Identity spoof with a complete loser at the center of massive CIA intrigue and infighting. This could be hilarious, but the jokes come too far and too few in between, and none of them are all that funny when they do show up.

Then, American Ultra is not serious enough when it wants to be a drama. Eisenberg is giving it his all, along with Connie Britton as the lady who ran his top secret program, but it’s hard to feel any emotion.

The basis for it has never been established.

We haven’t learned anything about Mike to make him sympathetic or heroic.

Instead, Nourizadeh falls back on the typical slow motion explosions and amping up the violence to grab our attention.

He fails.

American Ultra is rated R for strong bloody violence, language throughout, drug use and some sexual content.