American Assassin ** (2017, Dylan O’Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Taylor Kitsch, David Suchet, Charlotte Vega) – Movie Review

Dylan O’Brien stars as troubled 23-year-old Mitch Rapp, who is enlisted by CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) as a counter-terrorism operative recruit. She gets tough Cold War veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton) to train Mitch and they go on into the field to investigate attacks on military and civilian targets.

The trail leads to Rome (why Rome?, well the food is good!) and a crazed operative called Ghost (Taylor Kitsch) bent on starting a world war in the Middle East for reasons hard to follow, certainly to swallow.

This Jason Bourne-style spy action thriller is based on the novel by Vince Flynn, the 11th book in his best-selling series of novel and the first in chronological order. So Rapp’s story starts at the very beginning, a very good place to start, with Rapp proposing marriage to his girlfriend, who is promptly killed in a terrorist bloodbath on the beach that starts while he’s getting celebratory drinks.

This scene, a re-written idea from the book’s situation where the girlfriend dies on the Pan Am plane blown up by a terrorist over Lockerbie, Scotland, starts the film off with its credibility gap. It just doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t persuade you. And that is how the whole film runs thereafter. You are thinking, this could happen, but then you think, no, and especially, no not like this.

The 15 books have so far sold 20 million copies. Yes Flynn was inspired his novel writing by Robert Ludlum, but this film suggests a pale copy of Bourne.

The film always has a credibility problem, right from the beach scene start. O’Brien is a likeable, appealing, good little actor, trying hard to transition to adult roles after The Maze Runner and Teen Wolf. He runs well, like the young Tom Cruise, and grins nicely, like the young Tom Cruise, looks good and has a decent way with dialogue. But he never, ever suggests the CIA renegade hard guy, a man who could ruthlessly beat down a man and kill an opponent in cold blood. With a scrubby beard and scrubby chest hair, he tries his best to look scruffy, grungy and renegadey, but he just comes over as a nice boy.

All the characters are stereotypes and all the situations and locations are cliches. When the story gets to Rome, the film picks up, both in terms of action, atmosphere and character. But, when Kitsch’s role kicks in, and the gory violent tone of the movie turns to detailed torture, the film falls down again. And the CGI-led climactic Mediterranean sequence with the big bomb in Kitsch’s boat and the Sixth Fleet in danger is just ludicrous.

The 18-certificate film has an exceptionally nasty tone, relishing its gore, gunplay and violence. It is not a subtle or likeable film. With O’Brien in charge, it feels like a teen agent type of movie, so a 12 certificate film would be so much more acceptable, and his teens fans could come.

I can’t understand how Chris Hemsworth, Gerard Butler, Colin Farrell and Matthew Fox were considered for the Rapp role, as they are far too old and the whole point is that he is a college-age rookie. However, I can understand how Bruce Willis was attached to play the mentor  Stan Hurley. It would have been a good role for him. Yet film casting history is full of might have beens.

The role ends up with Keaton, who is way too classy for this stuff, but he takes it seriously, and in dead earnest, and it is his acting that propels the movie at all. Surprisingly, he can even suggest the old CIA hard guy. Never thought of him as a tough guy, more an Eighties New Man, but there it is, he’s a very, very good actor.

Sanaa Lathan is not in the same class, out of her depth as a CIA Deputy Director snapping orders at Keaton and others. It is a reasonable role, but she packs no weight or authority. But, oh dear, poor David Suchet is so much worse, in a feeble turn as the CIA Director. Admittedly, it is not much of a part, with little dialogue luckily. But he is on screen a lot, looking pensive, worried, concerned, upset, the whole gamut from A to B. Kitsch isn’t very good as the lip-smacking villain, but then his part isn’t very good. Charlotte Vega is no good in the key role of Katrina. Maybe we shouldn’t blame the actors too much, the roles are flimsy cliches with thin dialogue.

Filming took place in London, Rome and Budapest in September 2016. this is another credibility problem. Why is what is obviously Croydon standing in for Istanbul? And why is what is obviously Somerset House, in the Strand, London, standing in for the market square in Warsaw? No really, why? They could afford to go to Rome, Budapest and Valletta, Malta. So why?

Credited co-writer Edward Zwick was the director when movie was in the production stage in 2012.

RIP cancer victim Vince Flynn (1966–2013).

In March 2016, O’Brien was injured while filming a scene for the final Maze Runner installment Maze Runner: The Death Cure. He was in a harness on top of a moving vehicle when he was pulled off the vehicle and hit by another vehicle, resulting in concussion, facial fracture and lacerations. But in August 2016 he had a complete return to health and 20th Century Fox had a February 2017 start date for principal photography for The Death Cure, scheduled for release on 26 January 2018.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Movie Review

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