Jesse Eisenberg is becoming more and more like Wallace Shawn every day. I don’t mean physically, but temperamentally: He rarely strays from characters who are perturbed, angsty, neurotic or driven, in a broken sort of way.
So it’s one of the small pleasures of “American Ultra” to see him play, against type, a young man who appears to be a stoned-out convenience-store clerk in small-town West Virginia, living with his pothead girlfriend, Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). That twitchy character – who suffers from incapacitating panic attacks – is anything but mellow. Even at his most baked, Eisenberg’s Mike Howell comes across, at his core, as haunted by something.
That’s because Mike isn’t really a spaced-out druggie after all.
What he really is – which I’ll refrain from saying – is equally incongruous. It’s not a huge surprise: The film makes it pretty obvious only a few minutes in, when Mike kills two thugs in the parking lot using only a spoon and hand-to-hand combat straight out of “The Bourne Identity.” What’s best about “American Ultra” is the giggly absurdity of Eisenberg’s casting, both in terms of what Mike is and what he only seems to be.
This conspicuous disconnect also is, unfortunately, the movie’s greatest weakness. Directed by Nima Nourizadeh (“Project X”) from a script by Max Landis (“Chronicle”), “American Ultra” misplays its cards early by clueing viewers in to what is secretly going on in a way that’s both unsubtle and unsatisfying. If you haven’t figured out the twist by the time a woman in a trench coat and sunglasses (Connie Britton) walks into Mike’s store and says, apropos of nothing, “Mandelbrot set is in motion, echo choir has been breached, we’re fielding the ball,” you’re either not paying attention or you may have picked up a contact high from all the onscreen smoke.
Another small example of the film’s inability to let the audience figure things out: As Mike sits staring at an engagement ring he has bought for Phoebe, as if to say, “I wonder if this could be the right moment,” the character says, out loud, “This could be the right moment.”
Just how baked do they think we are?
As for the rest of the cast, John Leguizamo is a fun diversion as Mike’s dealer, but Topher Grace wears thin in a role that has him striding around in a suit barking obscenities at commandoes who, like the movie’s first two victims, keep trying to kill Mike, for reasons never adequately explained. Landis’ script is far from witty, and the violence quickly becomes excessive.
“American Ultra” has a clever premise. But it misses several opportunities to at least comment on, if not skewer, the spy movies that it only halfheartedly pokes fun at. As it is, it’s content to generate a low-grade buzz, rather than deliver a true high.
“Do you feel sick?” Phoebe ask Mike at one point (which, judging by the look on his face, he does). “No,” Mike replies, “I feel kind of amazing.” But the way Eisenberg renders that line – like the movie itself – is anything but. Rated R.
