Last night I went to a Thursday preview of American Assassin, based on the novel of the same name by Vince Flynn, and, as a huge fan of the spy genre, I thought it was very standard. Mitch Rapp (Dylan O'Brien) is the victim of a terrorist attack which claims the life of his fiancee. Consumed by thoughts of revenge, he tries to infiltrate a terrorist cell in Libya which attracts the attention of the CIA Deputy Director (Sanaa Lathan) who then proceeds to recruit him as a black ops agent. He is sent to train with veteran agent Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) and the two of them are sent on a covert mission to various locations around the world with a mysterious Turkish agent (Shiva Negar) to retrieve some plutonium stolen by a rogue mercenary (Taylor Kitsch). The story has a few interesting twists along the way but it is fairly predictable and more than a little far-fetched. There are some great action sequences including a fantastic virtual reality training simulation, a car chase through the streets of Rome, a fistfight on a speeding boat, and an epic explosion at sea. The low lighting and hand-held camera work give it a certain grittiness but I never really felt an edge-of-my-seat tension. The characters are pretty one-dimensional but O'Brien does a good job as the brooding loner turned operative (I suspect that he will appeal to a certain demographic) and Keaton is an absolute hoot to watch in an over-the-top performance, especially in a scene where he is tortured by a former protege. This movie is entertaining and fans of the genre will probably like it but it is ultimately forgettable. There is nothing that we haven't seen a million times before done much better in movies like the Bourne series.
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