In "American Assassin," the violence is startling and brutal. However, its impact is hampered by a predictable script and action sequences that feel like a watered-down version of "John Wick." And while Dylan O'Brien makes a fascinating and charming lead, and Michael Keaton unleashes a welcome degree of grumpiness, this is a mission that should have been aborted.
Still, "American Assassin" begins with a bang that sets the tone for several more. While on vacation at the beach in Spain, Mitch Rapp (Dylan O'Brien) proposes to his girlfriend, Katrina (Charlotte Vega), recording the tender event on his smartphone, unaware of the bloodshed that is to come. about to explode around him. Viewers, however, will be one step ahead of them, thanks in part to the cheesy set-up and the film's tell-tale tagline: "Killers aren't born, they're made."
Director: Jesse Atlas
Writers: Jesse Atlas, Aaron Wolfe
Stars: Bruce Willis, Andy Allo, Eugenia Kuzmina
For Mitch, the undercover CIA counterterrorism agent who stars in Vince Flynn's series of novels, getting done means tragedy must strike at the hands of deadly terrorists, who storm the luxury resort's beach in a wave of brutal and unrelenting violence. reflecting the actual 2015 Sousse attack in Tunisia. It's an unsettling event to watch, particularly with the film opening just days after the 9/11 anniversary, but it's especially frustrating because it triggers the first of many hackneyed clichés: the cold-blooded murder of Mitch's fiancée.
Dr. Smirnov (Yankovsky), the newly appointed director of a Moscow mental hospital, is intrigued by Timofeyev (McDowell), the institution's star kook, who suffers from the illusion that he is two different historical figures, the assassin of the tsar Alexander II, who dropped a bomb in 1881, and Yurovsky, the Soviet official who presided over the assassinations of Alexander's grandson Nicholas II and the entire Russian royal family in 1918. Smirnov is puzzled by the patient's uncanny ability to manifest symptoms that seem to be related to the fate of the murderers.
To understand Timofeyev's delusions and hopefully effect a cure, Smirnov immerses himself in the persona of Tsar Nicholas and engages in a strange dialogue with Yurovsky, during which the story of the murders unfolds from the perspectives of both sentenced to death. royalty. and the revolutionaries. This international co-production benefits from McDowell's subtle and complex performance in multiple leading roles. Less ostentatious but equally effective is Yankovsky, who assumes the twin roles of tsar and doctor and conveys the well-intentioned but essentially shallow thinking that leads one to death by murder and the other to an equally grim and ironic fate.
With a more accurate recreation of its historical core than has been seen on screen in Nicholas and Alexandra or the various Rasputin films, this is a compelling modern psychodrama and a powerful recreation of one of the seminal events of modern history, which addresses Russian history and the current turbulent state of the country effectively and compellingly.
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