American Ultra (2015) — Books, Films & Other Superheroes

Olga’s Notes:

Note1: Mike is a lovable stoner, stuck in a dead-end job in the sleepy town of Liman, West Virginia, which for some reason, and no matter how hard he tries, he seems physically unable to leave. It’s a familiar leitmotif – “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave” – of a place that has its residents under a spell that cannot be broken… Unless:

a) the portal to the Hellmouth opens and swallows up the entire town (Sunnydale, CA),

b) the town itself gets blown to bits by warring parties (Vukovar, Croatia),

c) The Mighty Avengers invade it to put Doctor Doom to justice (Doomstadt, Latveria),

d) you take a stone with a hole from the beach, thus removing Alistair Crowley’s infamous binding curse (Hastings, UK), etc.

Fiction and reality. How thoroughly they blur.

Note2: The cast delivers the pitch-perfect dialogue, but the whole script itself flows so naturally I simply couldn’t resist looking up the writer. Max Landis. I noticed that he has also created and co-wrote ‘Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’. Hope this was a one-off toe-dip into the murky waters of collaborative writing, and Max returns to working strictly by his lonesome.

Note3: Back to the cast: “American Ultra” is blessed with an effortlessly dovetailing cast. (come to think of it, most films on this list are, even “Sharknado”, in its own unique way). A special mention here goes to Walton Goggins, who plays the criminally insane, CIA-trained Asset Laugher, for paraphrasing his role of dentally-challenged, explosives-loving redneck Boyd Crowder from “Justified” (TV-series 2010–2015).

Helena’s Notes:

Note1: Every single film I watch these days tends to deliver at least one puke somewhere down the line.

Note2: When I was little, yeah, I had this feeling that someone was watching me. ‘Watching over you?’ Dad actually put down his papers, he was that freaked out. A good communist boy and a cold-blooded atheist, he probably thought his favourite daughter (me) was manifesting the first sign of spontaneous religious hysteria, courtesy of her mother’s notoriously Catholic heritage.

‘No, silly daddy!’ I ruffled up his hair. ‘Watching me. Reckon someone might have installed a camera behind one or both of my eyes and is now watching everything I do on a big screen someplace top secret.’

‘How does it feel when a speck of dust gets into your eye?’ he then asked.

‘Bloody awful,’ I said. ‘Like someone’s stabbing me in the brain.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Now, imagine how would it feel if someone had indeed gone to

the trouble of installing an actual film-camera behind your eye.’

He returned to his papers, and I returned to the bathroom to stare in my own eyes in the mirror.

This film has finally confirmed my suspicions. Okay, maybe it hadn’t been done to me, and even if it hadn’t been done to Mike as such, “American Ultra” proves that this sort of thing can be done.

Note3: So the main guy in the film, Mike, has the great talent for creating comic books and a latent super-power. He also has this girlfriend, Phoebe, who really likes him and wants him to be happy, although there is another side to her which I won’t be going into right now on account of not being allowed to give away like the entire plot. But he’s stuck in this godforsaken shithole town, and can never leave.

Sounds familiar. Question mark (btw, if you want to find out why I won’t use a question or exclamation mark, you’ll just have to read Olga’s books; and no she wouldn’t pay me to say this, or anything really, so donations most welcome). You see these people everywhere: they are thinking about it, and talking about it, and dreaming about it, and yet they never ever lift one single digit to make it happen. So I put it to you, whoever: what would it take to trigger your ass into action. What needs to go down before you decide that you will not waste another second of your life on wasting your life.

*if you have a good wastage tale of your own, do share in the comments box below. And nope, you would not be wasting your time, on account of my saying so.