americanassassin Movie Review: American Assassin

Movie Review: American Assassin

American Assassin is the new movie starring Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton. It’s based on a book of the same name written by Vince Flynn. The film is about a bereaved lone-wolf named Mitch Rapp *Dylan O’Brien) who loses his fiance during a brutal terror attack in Ibiza, Spain, and it inspires him to train himself Batman style to become a vigilante terrorist hunter.

5bef400e823d396b7a9605d37890b16d Movie Review: American Assassin
Punching this bag with no shirt is the only thing that brings me peace

He finds himself on the radar of the CIA who pick him up and convince him to join a secret operations task force led by Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). While training under Hurley, Rapp gets sent on his first mission — to track down a rogue agent who’s putting together a nuke with the clandestine help of the Iranian government. The rogue agent turns out to be an ex-member of Hurley’s task force, adding to the emotional stakes of the mission.

The trailers and the synopsis really had me excited. I love this kind of CIA, Jason Bourne, action movie with political intrigue and emotional depth type of genre. Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies, objectively not a great movie, is one of my favorite movies.

bodyoflies Movie Review: American Assassin
Body of Lies is a pretty good movie that you should probably watch instead of this movie

Unfortunately, American Assassin is an entry into this genre that lacks style, charm, uniqueness and depth which seems to have been constructed by pulling every tired trope out of a hat and pinning them to a wall. While the setup had the potential to be an enjoyable movie, the execution falls flat.

Dylan O’Brien, perhaps the best thing about this movie, is taken from scene to scene alternating brooding glares and gratuitous shirtlessness. All that shirtlessness comes at a cost — the time spent on it would have been better spent developing characters. What character development did exist felt hamfisted.

thumbnail 26434 Movie Review: American Assassin
In this snapshot, you can see all of the moments you care about the characters in one image.

Author

  • Ryan Night

    Ryan Night is an ex-game industry producer with over a decade of experience writing guides for RPGs. Previously an early contributor at gamefaqs.com, Ryan has been serving the RPG community with video game guides since 2001. As the owner of Bright Rock Media, Ryan has written over 600 guides for RPGs of all kinds, from Final Fantasy Tactics to Tales of Arise.

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