CBS Films presents American Assassin.

Premise:

American Assassin follows the rise of Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) a CIA black ops recruit under the instruction of Cold War veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). The pair is then enlisted by CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on both military and civilian targets. Together the three discover a pattern in the violence leading them to a joint mission with a lethal Turkish agent (Shiva Negar) to stop a mysterious operative (Taylor Kitsch) intent on starting a World War in the Middle East.

The cast is:

Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp

Michael Keaton as Stan Hurley

Sanaa Lathan as Deputy Director Irene Kennedy

Shiva Negar as Annika

Taylor Kitsch as “Ghost” (Ronnie)

As we make the transition from Summer to the Fall season, the Summer blockbuster movie season has passed and now we will see less frequent releases of big action movies through the end of the year.

With that being said I was looking forward on seeing the new Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton movie “American Assassin.” From the trailer, I see elements of the Bourne movie franchise. This got me excited. For one, after the disappointing month of August, I couldn’t wait to see a new, fresh story and hopefully the launch of a new action franchise. After seeing this movie, I was partially satisfied.

American Assassin’s story is very similar to The Punisher storyline. A normal man, after suffering a tragedy turns into a vigilante and seeks revenge.

Dylan O’Brien impressed me as the badass lead. Michael Keaton seemed to have fun with his character, he was delivering great lines and was a great casting as the mentor for Dylan O’Brien’s character. Taylor Kitsch was okay as the villain, he was a mediocre bad guy at best.

The first third of this movie had me hooked, after that though the movie began going downhill. For most Hollywood movies, I can suspend disbelief and just take what is presented to me, but this movie had a lot of aspects to the story that were far from reality.

I wish they would have given Dylan O’Brien’s character more time to grow and develop. It was tough believing that a regular guy, after suffering a tragedy in his life in 18 months can change his whole lifestyle and become an assassin, way to fast. I wished they would have invested more in the rivalry between O’Brien and one of the other guys he was training with.

Overall this was not an amazing movie, but was very fun and reminded me of the action/revenge movies from the 90s that seemed to be on cable every Friday night. The movie had great action and fight choreography, but even that became stale because there was no meaning behind some of these action scenes.

However, I look forward on seeing Dylan O’Brien grow as an actor and see where his career goes.

Also, I’ll be curious to see if this movie gets a sequel and becomes a new action franchise.

I would rate the film: 6.5/10

Go see American Assassin when the movie hits theaters on Friday, September 15th.

Watch the first trailer below.

Watch the second trailer below.

Watch the third trailer below.

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