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Rose (John Leguizamo, left) and Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg, right) in
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Movie review: 'American Ultra' wallows in silly gore

Alan Markfield

Movie review: 'American Ultra' wallows in silly gore

Reporting — live! — from the Jesse Eisenberg Film Festival, I’m here to tell you that the quirky Oscar-nominated star of “Social Network” (2010) has not one but two major new films now showing here simultaneously.

'American Ultra'

Starring: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, John Leguizamo.

Rating: R for strong bloody violence, language, drug use and sexual content.


“American Ultra,” the slightly newer of the two, is an ultra-violent action dramedy that opened today on 17 (count them, 17!) screens in and around Pittsburgh.

“The End of the Tour” — now playing on exactly one screen, at the Manor in Squirrel Hill — is the other, a brilliant two-character biopic based on the life of the late novelist David Foster Wallace.

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I went to the packed preview of “American Ultra” on Tuesday at the Waterfront, and to “End of the Tour” — with a total of four other people — Wednesday at the Manor.

If only the relative distribution and attendance figures were reversed.

But they’re not. 

In “American Ultra,” stoner clerk Mike (Mr. Eisenberg) spends the bulk of his time getting high behind the register of a rundown Cash & Carry convenience store in West Virginia, hoping to work up his nerve to propose to girlfriend Phoebe (“Twilight” saga’s Kristen Stewart), and maybe someday take her to Hawaii — if only he could overcome his strange attacks whenever he tries to leave the city limits.

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Turns out — unbeknownst even to himself — he’s actually a highly trained sleeper agent created by the CIA, which marks him as a liability and targets him for termination. But his sympathetic CIA creator/handler (Connie Britton) activates his latent skills and turns the mild-mannered Clark Kent-kinda slacker into a Superman-kinda killing machine able to turn an ordinary spoon into a WMD — a born-again super assassin, now summoning his programmed inner action-hero essence to save himself and his girlfriend.

“Something very weird is happening to me — I just killed two people!” he tells Phoebe. “They had guns and knives and they were being total [jerks]!”

“That’s awesome!” Phoebe replies.

In real life, the CIA’s MK Ultra program did indeed try to create super warriors via psychotropic drug experiments on willing and unwilling volunteers. I knew one of them, fondly and appropriately nicknamed “Goofy,” decades ago in Kansas. He’s still alive and well. Nowadays, his (and fictional Mike’s) horrific situation is the stuff of violent, yuk-yuk action-comedy.

In which regard, The comic unlikelihood of Mr. Eisenberg as gentle stoner-turned-accomplished-killer is good casting. He and Ms. Stewart previously co-starred in “Adventureland,” in which — like the film at hand — his character was a big pot smoker. FYI, by way of film firsts: As a promotional stunt, Lionsgate films gave out free grass at the recent San Diego Comic Con to anyone with a medical marijuana card.

If Mr. Eisenberg is on shaky ground here (which he is), there’s no doubting his obvious intelligence as an actor. He’s an acquired taste, but I’ve acquired it. As Mark Zuckerberg inventing Facebook in “Social Media,” he was superb. No less so, years earlier, in “The Squid and the Whale” (2005).

I haven’t quite acquired a taste for London-born, Iranian-bred director Nima Nourizadeh (who made the ultimate party-pic debut film “Project X” in 2012). Aiming for Tarantino-esque bloody-black comedy here, the violence grows more tedious as the plot grows more ludicrous. Yes, it’s semi-innovative fun, and semi-pseudo-romantic, thanks to the yeoman efforts of Mr. Eisenberg and Ms. Stewart. But like most adaptations of most graphic novels, it loses its charm as the bloodshed mounts, trying too hard to poke fun at too many genres — ending up wallowing in silly gore.

Which brings us back to “End of the Tour,” in which Mr. Eisenberg is so wonderful as Rolling Stone interviewer David Lipsky, and Jason Segel is even better as David Foster Wallace — the writer who comes along maybe once in a generation — with their deep mutual acknowledgment of nervousness. The famous writer wants something more than he has; the envious interviewer wants precisely what the writer already has. Both of them want validation, and feel guilty for wanting it.

After his 20-year battle with depression, Mr. Wallace committed suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. “Irony and fear of ridicule are distinctive features of contemporary U.S. culture,” he said — entertaining yet at the same time agents of a great despair and stasis in America. Mr. Wallace’s own literary irony focused on his longing for unself-conscious experience and communication in a media-saturated society.

All of which is way beyond “American Ultra,” but perhaps a good reason to see both.

Post-Gazette film critic emeritus Barry Paris: parispg48@aol.com.

 

 

First Published: August 21, 2015, 4:00 a.m.

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Rose (John Leguizamo, left) and Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg, right) in "American Ultra."  ( Alan Markfield)
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