Just how do people get promoted in the C.I.A., anyway? It’s all so covert, so cloak and dagger, maybe you don’t; maybe you just pick a new desk every day. That would explain a few things – there’s a moment late in American Ultra in which a person is genuinely surprised another has moved higher on the org chart in the interim. But yeah, how would you know? When would you find out? Not a whole lot of career lobbying goes on when you’re collecting intel undercover for years at a time, huh?
Speaking of undercover, Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is so deep, even he doesn’t know he’s a one-man sleeper cell. In fact, he’s a stoner and a bit of a zero. Disgusted by a personal inability to do right by his live-in girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart), he buys a ring and plane tickets to Hawaii. And then fails to emerge from the airport bathroom. Do people still do the “L” on the forehead thing? You’re stuck in West Virginian Hell, kid, and it’s your own fault.
Meanwhile in another film, C.I.A. desk jockey Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) gets an anonymous tip that her asset is to be liquidated. The C.I.A. speak is so fast and furious here you have to guess what’s going on; but you’ll probably be right. Lasseter ain’t going down without a fight and her run-in with superior Adrian Yates (Topher Grace, insufferable in this role) causes both agents to set-up-shop in Liman, WV for God-playing purposes on opposite sides on the good and evil fence. You gotta love the plot here: the C.I.A. has gone all out to screw with a small town for the purposes of both killing and saving one guy.
Arriving in Liman, Lasseter encounters Howell clerking alone and says the magic words, “Ala-peanut-butter-sandwiches” or some such 
nonsense in C.I.A. speak and Mike has the same stone-faced reaction you’d get from any convenience store register jockey: “You gonna buy that?” Internally, however, Mike has turned from a stoner into a lethal machine. Not a terribly bright one, it turns out, as fifteen minutes later he points out a gun that can only be reached by the guy who wants to kill him with it. Considering Mike kills a guy with a spoon just to set up said moment, we’ll give him a break.
The dormant tool of mayhem is a time-honored cinematic device – it’s been used for great serious effect in The Manchurian Candidate and great comic effect in The Naked Gun. American Ultra is somewhere in between. Mike is genuinely a nice guy; he’s just automatically predisposed, once triggered, to eliminate all human threats. He also has a weird thing about only using a weapon once. The dialogue makes no mention of this, but once Mike makes use of a weapon, that weapon is done, like a single-use video-game tool. This sets up a good audience guessing game of what he’ll employ next to do away with a foe. In a Wal-Mart, everything is potentially dangerous.
Speaking of single-use video-game tools, I like much of what Kristen Stewart has done since Twilight. I was worried that American Ultra was just gonna let the girlfriend be helpless while hurricane Mike raged; the film saw to it that Ms. Stewart would, indeed, get to do some stuff that did not involve gasping and saying, “look out!” Thanks to five (5!) ungodly bad Twilight films, she’ll will never be all that for me, but I can see her value as a supporting cast member. Just don’t let the camera linger there, ok?
Being an agent is confusing, often
The C.I.A. screws up now and then
“Acquire the asset?”
Or some other facet?
Sorry, which side am I on again?
Rated R, 95 Minutes
D: Nima Nourizadeh
W: Max Landis
Genre: Beware the stoner!
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Doped up and disillusioned
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: C.I.A. folks
