I have seen the future of action-comedy… and its name is American Ultra. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but there’s no getting past how smashing the first red-band trailer for the August pic really is. Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart as stoners caught up in a government operation to wipe out Eisenberg’s seemingly hapless cashier, the movie looks like the pothead’s answer to Chuck (one of my favorite series of all time), with Eisenberg’s protagonist realizing he has built-in training that makes him a lethal weapon given the right circumstances.
I put it on my list of must-see movies this summer, and after watching the trailer above, maybe you can understand why.
With Nima Nourizadeh (Project X) at the helm, we were always expecting something with a lot of energy, but American Ultra looks so much more insane than I had imagined it would – like a much funnier version of The Guest spiked with the guileless characters of a Harold and Kumar movies. There are huge explosions, ridiculous kills, copious weed jokes, a squeaky-clean Topher Grace villain and Connie Britton being a badass – basically everything I could want from a summer movie.
Max Landis (Chronicle) wrote the script for the pic, which co-stars Walton Goggins and John Leguizamo. The cast is terrific (it will be particularly amazing to see Eisenberg and Stewart, both respected performers, reteam after the underrated comedy Adventureland, which was shot early on in both of their careers), the energy is off the charts and the concept of a stoner secret agent getting high, kicking ass and then possibly forgetting all about it just screams promise to me.
American Ultra lands August 21.