Film Review: American Ultra

Natural Bored Killers

So here we are with our 250th blog on Black Ribbon Reviews and instead of having a mind-blowing, totally amazing, triple whammy style review to craft out, we have a singular, rather timid and overly anti-climactic take on American Ultra. a film so strung up on its' stoner/b-movie conventions that the only advice I can give is to watch the trailer and embrace in its' rather lovely 120 second runtime instead of watching a rather drawn out, overly stupid, and senselessly violent forgettable mess which, I assume, will quickly be transferred to a discount DVD bucket near you. Although American Ultra does boast a significantly impressive cast, with Twilight's Kristen Stewart and The Social Network's Jesse Eisenberg being the film's lead roles, the wide range of flaws that encompass the movie throughout prevent it from being the complete stoner action flick writer Max Landis must have originally wanted it to be. 

Not only is the level of senseless violence completely off the chart, but the film is ridden with cliches, from the script to the characters, whilst the constant need for the characters to interject the already meaningless lines of dialogue with tiresome swear words made the film a painful experience in a similar vein to this years' Spy, with both seemingly forgetting the power of a well-written speech and instead flooding our characters with the vocabulary of a 14 year old who has just realised how naughty such words are when used. Within all the negativity is a power couple comprising of the leading stars with Steward and Eisenberg obviously making the most of their dire script which makes their on-screen relationship the only positive aspect of the film, something of which doesn't save American Ultra from what it overly is; a forgettable mess.

Overall Score: 4/10