Film review: Jesse Eisenberg plays an unlikely hero in American Ultra

This violent action-comedy is half Pineapple Express and half Bourne Identity but not as good as either.

Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart in American Ultra. Alan Markfield / Lionsgate via AP Photo

American Ultra

Director: Nima Nourizadeh

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Jesse Eisenberg, Topher Grace, Connie Britton, Walton Goggins

Three stars

The likeably awkward chemistry of Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg remains intact in American Ultra, a violent action-comedy that is half Pineapple Express, half The Bourne Identity – but not as good as either.

Stewart and Eisenberg, who previously starred together in the splendidly low-key summer comedy Adventureland, again come together as an appealing, mutually mop-headed duo that balances Eisenberg's stuttering unease with Stewart's deadpan cool.

They play flannel-wearing West Virginia couple Mike and Phoebe, who are happy together despite Mike’s marijuana habit, his perpetual apologising and panic attacks sparked by just about anything that upsets his seemingly innate inertia.

Looking at a car that’s crashed into a tree, he wonders out loud to Phoebe, who is placating and devoted, whether he is the tree and she is the car. The small-town, low-stakes drama of American Ultra is convincing in the beginning, thanks to the two stars. But it is a set-up.

Unbeknown to Mike, who works as a shop assistant, he is an elite killing machine trained by the CIA – a decommissioned government experiment. Few actors in the movies would make for a more unlikely secret agent than Eisenberg. Did the programme also include Michael Cera? Was Woody Allen in charge?

Switching to Langley, the film, directed by Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) and written by Max Landis (Chronicle), fills in the backstory. A petulant young agent (Topher Grace) has risen through the ranks and wants to eliminate evidence of the experiment that gave Mike his secret talents, which was overseen by Connie Britton's more sympathetic Victoria Lasseter.

To prevent her former student’s death, she sneaks into the convenience store and activates Mike with a few code words. When thugs come to kill him, Mike is astounded to find himself expertly stabbing one of them with a spoon. Later, as he cowers behind a lamp post, looking at the bloody wreckage, he tells Phoebe: “I have, like, a lot of anxiety about this.”

Much mayhem ensues, surprisingly violent and cartoonish in its extremes, as the small town comes entirely under siege.

Walton Goggins (from TV dramas The Shield and Justified) joins the strong ensemble as the nuttiest of the CIA's small army, along with John Leguizamo as a local drug dealer.

The assembled talent could use more character development and a little more wit in place of the sadistic, fun-­draining comic-book action scenes that increasingly co-opt the comedy, which is too dependent on the joke of Eisenberg becoming an action hero – which becomes tiresome.

That said, American Ultra does have its simple genre charms thanks, significantly, to its entertaining cast and leading pair.

Stewart, in particular, looks like she's punching below her weight class. As is often the case in her post-Twilightcareer, she is the best thing in the movie.

She and Eisenberg remain lazy losers we can love – a Bonnie and Clyde for a more laid-back generation.