American Assassin. Directed by Michael Cuesta. Starring Dylan O’Brien, Michael Keaton and Taylor Kitsch. Rating: 6 (out of 10).
If you’re not already familiar with Mitch Rapp, there are plenty of ways to get to know him. Thirteen ways, in fact.
Vince Flynn wrote 13 books about counterterrorism agent Rapp; American Assassin was one of the last, a prequel to the series written not long before the author died somewhat unexpectedly of cancer at age 47, four years ago.
Fans have been eagerly awaiting a big-screen adaptation of the spy thrillers but with no small degree of trepidation over Hollywood tampering with Flynn’s legacy. The time period, for example, has been shifted to modern day to better accommodate potential sequels, the ethnicity of some characters may have changed, but the relentless action and precise political detail is all there.
But also present is a surfeit of machismo, even for an action film, that results in some stiff dialogue and which shortens Rapp’s growth curve, turning him into an omnipotent killing machine much sooner than is plausible or necessary.
There are, after all, a dozen books to go.
After a terrorist incident in which a loved one is killed, Rapp (Dylan O’Brien, The Maze Runner) becomes a one-man army determined to take on a terrorist cell single-handedly. Naturally, those late-night chats in Farsi put him on the radar of the real terrorism professionals, the CIA. He’s recruited by the Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) for intensive training with cranky operative Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), “the best I’ve ever known,” according to Irene. And as for an endorsement of Rapp’s skill-set: “You want a killer? Here he is,” she tells Stan.
Even though the CIA knows that Rapp is traumatized and trigger-happy – or perhaps because of it – they trust him to “kill people who need to be killed” in an elite unit. Foreign threats are among those targeted but it turns out that the top of the kill list belongs to a home-grown terrorist and former protégé of Stan’s (B.C. boy Taylor Kitsch of Friday Night Lights, John Carter) who is peddling weapons-grade plutonium to the highest bidder.
Keaton excels at being ornery, here a weaponized version of his last character, McDonald’s pioneer Ray Croc, and Kitsch is a strong screen presence despite scant backstory and motivation. Dylan O’Brien is a wise choice, being fresh-faced enough (with or without the terrorist/hipster beard) to attract a younger set of viewers; American Assassin has “not your parents’ spy movie” stamped all over it.
Michael Cuesta (Kill The Messenger, Homeland) certainly has the pedigree to pull off the action and pyrotechnics demanded of him but the film succeeds most in the small moments that focus on the relationship of these three men, and how trauma has transformed them all in different ways.
After several years and 60 rejection letters, Flynn self-published American Assassin and only then found himself with an agent and a two-book deal. If only filmmakers had left some of the polish off their hero and given Rapp that kind of grit – a scrappiness befitting his age and experience – then we’d have a franchise to root for.
