By Emilio Frenk.
Director: Michael Cuesta
Cast: Dylan O`Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanna Lathan, Charlotte Vega, Scott Adkins, Shiva Negar, David Suchet and Taylor Kitsch.
Rating: Poor.
Director Michael Cuesta, brings “American Assassin”, an action film that could have a better result if more time would have been invested in it`s story.
Based in the best selling novel by Vince Flynn, the movie tells the story of Mitch Rapp (Dylan O`Brien) a young American man who is vacationing with his girlfriend Katrina (Charlotte Vega) in Spain until both are attacked by an Islamic Terrorist Group which causes Katrina´s death.
An enraged Mitch is eager to seek revenge an is on the eye of CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan), who see´s something special in Rapp and convinces him to take a special trainee withformer U.S Navy Seal and Cold War Veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton).
In there Rapp will receive an intense combat training where he will master his skills and the most important rule: Never let his emotions interfere.
Eventually he and Hurley will be recruited in a mission to Istanbul to stop a terrorist who calls himself Ghost (Taylor Kitsch) who has in his possession enough plutonium to make a nuclear warhead.
Now Rapp with the help of Hurley most stop Ghost before he does some real damage that could put humanity in risk.
The problem that I saw in “American Assassin” was the screenplay itself that was written by Stepehn Schiff, Michael Schiff, Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick.
The plot was all over the place and the characters were just thrown at the screen with no motivation whatsoever.
If the movie would have been written only by Edward Zwick perhaps we would have seen a different film since Zwick´s credentials are very high in the industry.
The motivation of Taylor Kitsch´s character was not clear until almost the end of the second act and I feel that there should have been a little bit of backstory in the character which is reveled but too late.
The performance of Michael Keaton was the best thing in the film and plays his character with so much wit and realism that root for him.
Dylan O`Brien´s work is the most decent one I´ve seen in and I think that if he choses the right material properly he could improve more as an actor.
The direction by Michael Cuesta was all over the place, the opening scene was laughable and some of the action sequences look to fake.
I believe that this movie had a lot of potential of delivering the goods but it was not the case due to the poor screenplay that was involved and Cuesta`s directing.
The ending of the film was very weak and at that point after the mission was completed I couldn´t care less about Dylan O`Brien´s character since the ending has nothing to do with the main plot of the film.
“American Assassin” is one of big disappointment in the action genre this year and due to the major flaws the movie had I cannot give a recommendation to it.