American Assassin (2017)

Based on the novel by Vince Flynn, with a script worked on by four people (including Edward Zwick), and starring quite a lot of people you couldn't exactly class as leading names in the movie business, American Assassin is a bit of a hard sell. I didn't even know if it was going to be a thriller or more of an action movie when I started watching it. It turns out to be an enjoyable blend of the two, and actually throws up one or two good surprises along the way.

Dylan O'Brien plays Mitch Rapp, a young man who has survived a traumatic incident and is now motivated to spend his time trying to infiltrate and destroy terrorist cells. Just when he thinks he is about to succeed, about to get his revenge, he is beaten to the punch by a U.S. Special Forces team. But every cloud has a silver lining. Mitch is delivered into the hands of Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), a man who will train him to become part of an elite team, ready to continue the war on terror with a new, interesting bag of tricks. And Mitch, as well as his fellow soldiers, will need to remember everything they have been taught as they are tasked with finding a bunch of nuclear material that may already have been assembled into a powerful weapon.

After a wild opening sequence, American Assassin immediately settles into something a bit more low-key and interesting than you might be expecting. It's a film that both delivers the action beats and also keeps prodding at the psyches of the main characters, heroes and villains (with it sometimes being hard to differentiate between the two).

Director Michael Cuesta does a decent job of things. Some of the action is a bit choppy in places, and there are moments that feel far too heavy-handed and obvious, but it's all done with good intentions and attempts to convey information without ever feeling too patronising. The script feels smart and sharp, even while working through scenes in snippets of movie-grade reality (if you know what I mean).

O'Brien is fine in the lead, and it's good to see another movie like this without a muscular ass-kicker in the main role, and decent support comes from Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, Taylor Kitsch, and even Scott Adkins, but the main draw here is Keaton, who lends his weight to something that would otherwise never be seen outside the confines of a bargain bin selection.

I can see why some will watch this and be disappointed. It doesn't always go for the easy option, and some of the action beats will feel too brief and messy, while Cuesta and the writers (Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Marshall Herskovitz, and Zwick) do their best to show that fights can be won by brains as well as brawn, but the way it at least tries to do something a bit different is why I ended up enjoying it so much. I hope others end up in agreement with me.

7/10

Out this week in the UK, people can pick up the Bluray here.
USA people can pick it up here.