Star Rating:

American Assassin

Director: Michael Cuesta

Release Date: Friday 15th September 2017

Genre(s): Action, Thriller

Running time: 111 minutes

After suffering a huge personal loss at the hands of terrorists, Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien of The Maze Runner and Teen Wolf fame) decides to dedicate his life to getting revenge. He catches the attention of the CIA and gets enlisted as a black ops recruit. He starts to train under the tutelage of a ruthless veteran named Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) and they are soon assigned their first mission - to take down a mysterious operative, nicknamed "Ghost" (Taylor Kitsch). Hurley feels Rapp isn’t ready, but given his own relationship with "Ghost", it may be he himself who is ill-prepared.

American Assassin primarily has two major props going for it in Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton’s leading and naturally compelling performances. However, the film has various flaws which ultimately add up to it feeling like a missed opportunity.

The film shamelessly uses several movie clichés such as can be seen in its opening scene where we have the beautiful, young couple on an idyllic beach setting. There are un-ironic lines such as (and this is a direct quotation) ‘I believe in you, and I’m the only choice you’ve got’ and terrible CGI that makes the movie look like its decades old, and not in a cool 80s action movie way either.

If anything, this film is very much trying to be of the moment and is undoubtedly picking up on an action movie aesthetic that began with 2014’s John Wick and can more recently be seen in Charlize Theron starrer Atomic Blonde. There’s a real bloodiness to the violence (which, in fairness to director Michael Cuesta, is used really effectively in the opening scene of the movie) and choreography, though one does wish Cuesta had opted for a David Leitch style of cinematography consisting of long shots really showing the actors kick ass, rather than the Paul Greengrass style of shaky cam and fast cutting which makes you miss the 'actual' fighting that’s going on (Side note: If you don’t believe me that the film is going for a young John Wick look, check out Dylan O’Brien in the third act. With that slightly overgrown hair, tight-fitted three-quarter length shit and bit o’ facial hair, he definitely bears likeness to Keanu Reeves’ now iconic character).

The first half of the film in which we see Rapp train himself to be a master of martial arts and range shooting among other things – and seriously, props to Dylan O’Brien here for getting into the character both physically and emotionally in a way that makes for an effective lead performance, especially opposite a pundit like Michael Keaton – and his training under Hurley provide good action set pieces and conflict. However, once the characters get into their mission, American Assasin is weighed down by plot and is way too focussed on Kitsch’s villain, who is just plain boring, no matter how many monologues they give him. As a result, the third act never takes off the way it should, though on the bright side there is one rather brilliant sequence in which Michael Keaton is let loose in his distinctive Michael Keaton way.