Review – American Assassin

American Assassin is a mindless movie, but not your typical mindless movie.  When I say mindless, you probably think of a movie like Transformers (2007), where it requires the audience to barely use their brains because of the little to no substance in the film.  American Assassin is a movie that craves substance and wants to you to think but doesn’t require you to because it treats the audience like infants and spoon-feeds us everything in the movie.  It doesn’t just show us its cards, it shows us the entire deck, leaving no mystery and little thrills.

After a horrific tragedy, loner Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) comes up with an elaborate scheme to get revenge on the people responsible for the tragedy.  Training ever-so intensely for his revenge, his plan is foiled when the C.I.A. steps in.  Impressed with his skills and intelligence, yet worried about his attitude and focus, the C.I.A. send Rapp to train with ex-Special Ops agent Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton).  Rapp is pulled out of training early, as he and Hurley must travel to Rome to stop the sale of stolen plutonium that is going to be used for a nuclear bomb.  In order to succeed in the mission, Rapp needs to get away from his past and his own motivations and do what is best for the team.

What was most frustrating during this movie was the lack of mystery.  Rapp is an interesting character, but would have been even more interesting if he was fleshed out more.  His journey from vengeful loner to C.I.A. hero is very, very weak and the nuclear bomb plot and villain are incredibly cliché and flat.  Rapp is never fully developed because the movie wants to focus on the nuclear bomb plot rather than it’s main character.  I would have been more interested if we did not see the tragedy that happens to Rapp (we see that in the first ten minutes) and learn what happened through the erratic PTSD he is suffering from.  I loved the scenes when Rapp was training with Hurley.  They were brutal, slick, and exciting.  I wish the movie focused more on this aspect and showed Rapp’s growth while he and Hurley go toe-to-toe.  Seeing a complex character like Rapp wasted like this is annoying.

What also killed me is calling this movie American Assassin, because Rapp is not an assassin, he’s a hired C.I.A. agent.  He did not assassinate anyone important, he was just trying to get the mission completed by any means necessary, which was also rather annoying.  Rapp never listened to anything Hurley or any of his other superior agents said.  Rapp is a bit rebellious and does a lot on his own, but every single order Hurley yelled at him, Rapp did the exact opposite.  The movie would have been better titled The Deaf Agent, because that is closer to what Rapp really is in this film.

This movie isn’t all bad, however.  The hand-to-hand combat scenes are pretty badass.  They move very quickly, yet aren’t incredibly shaky like in the later Bourne movies.  Dylan O’Brien does what he can with his weak character and shows he is a future star in Hollywood.  And Michael Keaton gives easily the best performance in the movie.  He is incredibly intense, yet has some nice comedic moments as well.  It’s nice to see Keaton continue to challenge himself.

American Assassin is an okay movie that could have been good.  The film makes it easy on the audience by giving us every answer we need before we are even asked the question.  O’Brien and Keaton are solid and the fight scenes are cool, but this movie could have been an interesting character study, yet ends up being formulaic and bland with the wrong title.

Did you see American Assassin?  What did you think?  Comment below or hit me up on Twitter and Instagram, @kevflix, or on Facebook by searching Kevflix.