American [Blank]. Two film reviews for the price of one!

It is a truth, universally acknowledged, that a man in possession of a Cineworld Unlimited card will go and see any old crap at the cinema, just so he feels like he’s getting value for money.  I draw the fucking line at Jane Austen adaptations, by the way.  This year has seen me take in some genuinely great films (Get Out, Baby Driver, Dunkirk) and some absolute dross (King Arthur, The Mummy, Transformers).  At a loose end and with no idea of the quality of either film, I decided to see two consecutive films featuring the word ‘American’ in the title.

Cinema has a complicated recent history with this approach.  Such is America’s vast cultural influence, adding the word to the start of the film carries, for better or worse, some serious weight, either bestowing a superlative quality or suggesting a uniqueness only found in the 50 states. There are some classics (Beauty, Psycho, Movie, Graffiti and - for its time - Pie), most of which run with the unquantifiable uniqueness angle.  There are some decent but forgettable films (Sniper, Gangster, Mary, Hustle), and some which, if I’m being generous, just aren’t up to much (Ultra, Pastoral).  So how would the latest entries, American Assassin and American Made measure up

Assassin is first up.  It tries to be a Jack Bauer/Jason Bourne-like ‘living weapon’ film but suffers from ham-fisted politics (Iran wanting to nuke Israel, etc.) in the plotting, some truly awful dialogue, and logical gaps that make Suicide Squad seem coherent.

Occasional maze runner Dylan O’Brian, miscast but doing his best, plays Mitch Rapp (yes, he’s really called that), a young man whose life is torn apart when his implausibly attractive fiancé is killed by pesky Islamic fundamentalists moments after he’s proposed.  Despite being shot several times himself, he spends the next 18 months not recovering from bullet wounds, but preparing himself to be the titular assassin.  We aren’t told that he has any previous specialist training, but he becomes a skilled MMA fighter, weapons expert, and all round spy in the time it takes most people to plan a wedding.

Trying to infiltrate and kill the terrorist cell responsible for his dead girlfriend, he gets on the CIA radar and is selected for specialist Black Ops training ran by none other than Michael Keaton in the kind of role that former A-listers like him and Kevin Costner get these days (he’s better than this and he knows it, but having the time of his life being hard as fuck).  The CIA’s logic (used sparingly here) is that Rapp’s lack of army training makes him ideal for deep cover as he won’t have to “un-learn bad habits…” and won’t stand out as a boot camp graduate.

What ensues is a globetrotting search for missing weapons-grade nuclear material and Taylor Kitsch who, to the surprise of absolutely nobody, turns out to be a former protégé of Keaton’s and out for revenge.  There are a few scenes of decent enough action, a good fight scene between Kitsch and O’Brian (inventively set on a speedboat so advantages are lost and gained every time it hits a wave), and the whole film has a pleasing no-punches-pulled brutality to it.  Any indications that they were trying to attract a Young Adult audience by casting O’Brian disappear during a scene where fingernails are removed during torture.

That said, the whole thing is very silly, not terribly good, and the key plot point - Rapp’s transition from Very Angry Young Man to American hero - is too much of a leap.  As these films tend to, it makes implausible jumps, dispenses with character motivation where the plot requires.  O’Brian does his best at playing a tortured man overcoming tragedy and does ok with the physical stuff, but ultimately he looks like the member of a boyband who gets all the attention.  The action is just ok, and the plot falls apart under the slightest scrutiny.  Atomic Blonde is much much better at doing the same thing; American here offers no superlative.

Doug Liman, having kick-started the rogue assassin sub-genre with The Bourne Identity and long since abandoned his Indie roots, directs Tom Cruise for the second time in American Made.  Based on the true story of Barry Seal, a former commercial airline pilot recruited by the CIA in the late 70s to spy on revolutionary forces in Central American countries, and then by Pablo Escobar to smuggle cocaine on his return flights, American Made is a fine film.

Cruise plays seal and turns in one of his best, least showy, performances.  Smartly told by Seal in a series of flashbacks on self-recorded VHS tapes, this legitimately allows for an exposition-dealing voiceover to cover the more complex parts of the plot.  Structurally, the film follows the Goodfellas-Wolf Of Wall Street model of huge rise and sudden fall. We see Seal’s life become more and more complex as the CIA expends his operation to include guns and eventually people.  He becomes involved in the notorious Nicaraguan Contra affair, moving troops to be trained in America and weapons in the opposite direction.  Not letting facts get in the way of a good story, Liman sets a good pace and lets the insanity ensue.  He also keeps a light and breezy tone, despite the drama featuring some of the darkest actions in the history of U.S. foreign policy.  For anyone who knows anything about the bloody history of the region this may seem incongruous, distasteful even, but Liman is playing for fun; showing the American way (enterprise, capitalism) as fun, dangerous, but the only way to live.

A shady CIA is personified by Domhnall Gleeson, playing Seal’s handler ‘Schaffer’.  Cocksure when manipulating Seal’s every move but clearly under pressure when back in his office, Gleeson gives another in a string of fine performances.  Caleb Landry Jones does well as Seal’s brainless hick brother-in-law, the cause of most of the problems Seal encounters.  Sarah Wright, as Seal’s wife, er, Seal, does well with a thin part (a little too forgiving, but their family bond is sweet).

Structuring the film around several periods in Seal’s life allows Liman to tell the story in quite a loose manner, with scenes playing out like vignettes rather then connected narrative tissue: Seal’s struggle to take off in a cocaine-loaded plane on a crappy runway is brilliant; his endeavours to stow his money echoes Scorsese at his most playful; his escapes from DEA aeroplanes are fun, OTT moments.

Seal’s fate, whether you know it already or not, is inevitable towards the end of the film.  It could make for a dour ending but Liman doesn’t allow it.  More acknowledgement of legend than melancholy finale, you leave the cinema feeling like you’ve seen something so daft it couldn’t have really happened, but you’ve really enjoyed watching it happen.

And I suppose that’s the real American… meaning here, particularly these days: superlatively silly, and uniquely implausible.  And some examples turn out much better than others.