Movie - American Ultra

Note:  There may be some minor spoilers throughout, but I will attempt to keep them at a minimum.

     American Ultra is a hard movie to place into a specific category.  It's part action movie, part stoner comedy, part love story, and a whole lot of other stuff all wrapped into one.  I personally love it when a movie is willing to take a risk and try to do something different, and American Ultra does exactly that.  The problem with taking a risk, is that sometimes you are going to succeed and sometimes you are going to fail, and I felt that this movie did a little bit of both, but mostly succeeded in what it wanted to accomplish.
     The story follows Mike (played by Jesse Eisenberg), a down on his luck, unmotivated, stoner that works at a convenience store, and spends his free time with his girlfriend Phoebe (played by Kristen Stewart) and getting high.  He also is a very paranoid and anxious person, so much so that he can't leave town because he goes into anxiety fits that cause him to throw up.  He is trying to find the perfect time to propose to his girlfriend, when the movie takes a huge turn and you find out that Mike is actually a retired asset for the CIA, whose memory has been erased and replaced with new memories to forget about his past.  When the CIA decides to terminate the asset, a.k.a. Mike, the agent that got him into program to begin with (played by Connie Britton) decides to activate him in an attempt to save his life.  A series of events then begins to play out where Mike is trying to come to grips with his new found abilities and trying to figure out just what happened to him, while he also tries to save his girlfriend and get out alive.
     First of all, the performances by all cast members is pretty spot on for what the movie is.  At times the movie can be a bit over the top, but in a good way, and the actors make it all seem believable.  Jesse's role in particular is a difficult role to pull off, as Mike is torn between the only memories that he has, which is getting high and messing up everything, and the new found abilities that he has, which come out by instinct as he needs them, and Jesse pulls it off perfectly.  I know that Kristen Stewart gets a lot of flack, mainly because she was in the Twilight movies, but I felt that she did a very good job as well, especially in some of the more intimate scenes with Mike, as you really are pulling for them as a couple and their relationship feels very real, if not more than a little bit messed up.
     I think the biggest problem I have for the movie is the marketing.  I didn't know a lot about the movie before last week, right before it was coming out, and the trailers made it feel like a comedy first, and an action movie second, but I feel that the comedy really took a back seat.  If anything, it was a romance movie first (move like True Romance than say, any movie with Kate Hudson in it), then an action movie second, and comedy came in a distant third.  I don't mean to say that there weren't any funny parts, or that they were trying to be funny and it misfired, but more that the comedy aspect was just used sparingly and only as appropriate.  When I watched the trailer, I thought dark comedy like Zombieland (another fantastic Jesse Eisenberg movie), but it didn't approach anywhere near the comedy level that was in that movie.  I just wonder if better marketing as to what the movie really is at its core would have served its box office numbers a little better, as it didn't fair very well over the weekend.
     Overall, I think that American Ultra is a gritty, mostly original film, that dared to think outside of the box, and I don't think it will find the audience that it deserves.  I think those that come across it will either get it, and will think the movie was fantastic, or they won't see just what the movie was trying to do, and will pass over it and not give it a second thought.  I was in the first group, as I think that this type of movie is what we need more of at the box office.  I enjoy watching Marvel movies and sequels to big blockbusters as much as the next guy, but I also want to see something I haven't seen before, and American Ultra did exactly that.  While not a perfect movie, it is still very solid, and hits all the notes it was trying to hit.

My rating for the movie is 8/10