I don't think American Assassin is a good movie, exactly—it's a bit too long; it's shot with a workmanlike competence that succinctly relays information without interesting or exciting the viewer; its twists and turns are all a bit too predictable, never a good sign for a would-be thriller—but it does have a pair of my favorite performances of the year.
Neither of those is delivered by the nominal star of the film, Dylan O'Brien. He's playing the titular assassin, Mitch Rapp, an all-American, upper-class kid whose (ludicrously attractive, bikini-clad) fiancée is brutally murdered by Islamist terrorists on a beach in Ibiza. The killing inspires Mitch to hit the gym, take to the gun range, and start chatting with the terrorist cell whose leader planned the attack that destroyed his world.
Mitch doesn't play by the rules, you guys! He's a loose cannon. While practicing MMA, he doesn't stop when a guy taps out. While at the shooting range, he steps into the line of fire, menacingly marching toward the paper targets standing in for his enemies. I bet his tendency to ignore procedures is going to go really well when he joins a team of CIA-led black book killers—American assassins, if you will—headed by Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton).
Keaton is clearly having a lot of fun in this movie: He seems to know the role is schlock and takes advantage of the opportunity to go full Nic Cage for the duration. All tics and quirks, Keaton does "controlled crazy" better than just about anyone out there; it's hard to remember a time when he was considered wildly inappropriate for the role of Batman. Keaton is almost too twitchy and tightly wound for the role; it's hard to take his Hurley seriously when he's chewing out Mitch Rapp for disobeying orders yet again, given that Hurley looks ready to start jumping rope with the entrails of terrorists at any moment.
Keaton's mania must have rubbed off on Taylor Kitsch, who plays an American operative with an unknown plan named Ghost. Before seeing the film, I had prepared a whole rant about Kitsch, whose presence in a project (True Detective Season Two; Battleship; John Carter of Mars) usually spells doom. But … he's actually pretty entertaining here? A little crazy, moving about the screen with a wide-eyed litheness that makes his deranged traitor all the more plausible. A whole movie about Ghost and Hurley with Rapp pushed way off to the side would've been a far more entertaining affair.
The stakes once Hurley and his team become ready for the field are, naturally, quite high: a cache of weapons-grade Russian plutonium has hit the black market and the Iranians are looking to build a bomb in order to wage holy war against Israel. While I approve of this mishmash of rightwing bugbears jammed together all at the same time—lord knows I love a movie about killin' America's enemies good and dead—I wish it had been in service of something a bit more exciting.
Director Michael Cuesta, working with a script that received a polish from Ed Zwick, among others, keeps the action moving from moment to moment but generally does so in the dullest way possible, slapping fight scenes together in quickly cut, sloppily choreographed ways. There are flashes of technique—the opening attack on the beach, for instance, keeps the camera on Mitch in a continuous shot as he stumbles through gunfire trying to find his girl, heightening the tension by putting us in his shoes while chaos unfolds around him—but no sustained effort at artistry.