Review: American Ultra

“Like the protagonist of his film, Nima Nourizadeh’s American Ultra suffers from an identity crisis. The package sounds great on paper: A stoner targeted for elimination by the CIA learns he’s a highly trained government superspy of the Jason Bourne persuasion who gets reactivated in the face of imminent death and becomes a very, very puzzled action hero. That’s the first of the movie’s two faces. The other is a failed somber critique of the very lemon that Nourizadeh squeezes so much lemonade from, the idea that the U.S. powers-that-be are shadier than the Muir Woods and utterly lacking in scruples. But hey, in between commentary on bureaucratic overreach, here’s a dollop of slick hyper-violence.” (Via Paste Magazine.)