American Ultra has a promising premise, but does so little with it that all we eventually get is a succession of the kind of bang-bang action that all but forbids thematic or character development, but usually satisfies the undemanding audience these days.
It seems that Topher Grace has headed up a CIA operation that turned ordinary civilians into martial-arts supermen, but only when they are being attacked, and only temporarily, and it leaves them with no memory of the attack or their defense or the training that made it all possible, or apparently anything about the CIA at all. And now Grace wants to wipe off the record any trace of the program. Why is never revealed.
Jesse Eisenberg is a veteran of this operation, so he must go, and again, why is unclear because everybody in the movie seems to know about the operation and it seems to have been a big success. The first attack on Eisenberg suggests what could have been done with this general plot: he demolishes his attackers and is terrified by his accomplishment, if he really understands that he did it himself at all. Even I can imagine things that could have been done if his discovery of his powers had been gradual, but the source had remained unknown, and he didn't realize that they only appeared if he was attacked by somebody else-- he couldn't use them in a personal cause or become a comic-book superhero, which he could have been shown trying to do.
But American Ultra just turns into a fairly satisfactory action melodrama, until the ending credits present an animated parody of action dramas that suggests that this was intended to be a comedy all along.
You could have fooled me. In fact, American Ultra did.
