Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg will be joining forces once again for yet another left-field comedy, starring together in Iranian-British director, Nima Nourizaheh’s second movie release, American Ultra. Having worked alongside each other on the relative indie kicks of 2009’s Adventureland, they’re back again in this stoner comedy action movie. Check out the trailer below to see a bit more on what to expect, but if we had to sum it up we’d probably put it somewhere between The Bourne Ultimatum and Pineapple Express.
Release date
The UK release date for American Ultra has been confirmed for Friday the 4th September 2015, following on from its planned arrival in the US on the 21st August 2015. It’s not got much in the way of crazy special effects or anything jumping out of the screen, so it’s not going to be a 3D screening release. It may not be one of the biggest action adventure releases of the summer, but with Fantastic Four and Terminator Genysis picking up a fair amount of bad reviews it’s going to need to mess things up royally to get the wooden spoon honours.
Plot
The story follows stoner shop assistant, Mike Howell (Eisenberg), who’s life gets completely messed up when a suspicious woman in a trench coat and shades comes into the little store and delivers a cryptic message to him, which he doesn’t understand and passes off as another crazy customer. However, when he’s subsequently attacked by two men in the shop’s car park and kills them both with Agent 47-like precision, he discovers that there’s more to his hazy past than his slacker lifestyle would imply.
Not knowing what the hell to do with the dead bodies lying on the car park floor he calls girlfriend, Pheobe (Stewart), and the two of them set about working out what their next moves should be. However, they find themselves in the thick of a secret government project with Mike as a highly trained agent, so he’ll need to be able to tap into all of his locked away memories and skills to make it out the other side alive with his stash still in tact.
Cast
In addition to Kristen Stewart (Still Alice) as Phoebe and Jesse Eisenberg (Batman Vs Superman: Dawn Of Justice) as Mike, the cast also features Topher Grace, who worked with Eisenberg previously on The Double, as Adrian Yates, Connie Britton as Victoria Lasseter and Tony Hale as Petey Douglas. John Leguizamo (Ice Age: Continental Drift) has been confirmed as Mike’s slightly unhinged buddy, Rose, Bill Pullman (The Equalizer) will play a character called Krueger and Walton Goggins (Lincoln) stars as the randomly named Laugher.
Production
Nima Nourizadeh has been in charge of the director’s chair for the production of the movie, following up on his only other movie release to-date, 2012 comedy Project X. Having previously directed music videos for Dizzee Rascal, Franz Ferdinand, Bat for Lashes, Santigold, Hot Chip and Lily Allen, it’s impressive that he appears to have made the transition to the big screen stick well enough.
The story for American Ultra has been written by Max Landis, who’s past credits include Josh Trank’s breakout 2012 sci-fi thriller Chronicle.
First impressions
We’re approaching American Ultra with a certain amount of dubious trepidation. It looks like it could be a bit of a laugh with some fast paced fight scenes, but we’re just not convinced it’ll be enough to get the movie-going masses flocking in through the doors. The jokes in the trailer below aren’t ridiculously funny, but maybe they’re saving the best ones for the film itself. We’ll have to wait until the UK release date in early September 2015 to find out for sure.
