4k-UHD/Movie Review: American Assassin

 

This is a 2017 film based (very loosely) on the series of spy novels written by the late author, Vince Flynn, centered on the character of Mitch Rapp (played in the movie by Dylan O'Brien). The book series started out with the novel Transfer of Power, which was actually Flynn's second novel, but the first to feature the character of Rapp. In that book, Rapp was a 31-year-old off-the-books CIA agent who hunted down terrorists in the prime of his career as a spy/assassin (think Jack Bauer in the series 24). After writing about 11 novels set around the older Rapp, Flynn wrote two prequel novels, "American Assassin" and "Kill Shot", which basically filled in Rapp's origin story. 

This movie is loosely based on the novel American Assassin (and to some extent Kill Shot) but changes elements of the story significantly (such as how Rapp's college girlfriend is killed which set him on his path to the CIA). Some elements from the book do make it into the movie, but it basically tells its own story (largely involving a rouge agent). While the movie does include character traits and heavily adapted plot elements from the books, it does not use the actual storylines from either of the books as Vince Flynn wrote them. 

For those who get the 4k disc, the A/V quality of the UHD disc is very good, and all of the extras are included on the UHD disc, although you do get a regular blu-ray disc as well. The extras include a making-of featurette that runs about 10 minutes, a featurette on casting O'Brien as Rapp, a featurette on the character of Stan Hurley (played by Michael Keaton), and a featurette on the main antagonist. Then there is a featurette on the stunts from the film, and one on the locations in which the movie was shot. Finally, there is a Q&A session with O'Brien and Taylor Kitsch, that runs almost a half an hour (and is the longest of the extras). All totaled, you get about just under 90 minutes of bonus material.

This is a good action movie, but it is definitely better if you have not read the books and are not already invested in the characters. I had not yet read the books when I saw the movie, but now that I have started reading them, I can definitely tell why some fans really felt that the movie did not do enough to hold true to the books. I remember Flynn being interviewed when he was negotiating the movie rights before he passed away and basically admitting that he would have to give up control of the story and that if the characters made it to the big screen, the stories would be a lot different than what he wrote. That is absolutely what happened and I think if the movie would have been more faithful to the book, and been set in the late 1980s, it would have been better received by the fans. That said, I think O'Brien did a very good job as a young Mitch Rapp, and Michael Keaton was great as Stan Hurley. Since the movie pretty much bombed in its theatrical release, the chances of there being a follow-up movie or a franchise of movies are pretty slim, but as a stand-alone action movie, it is definitely worth watching if you can accept that you are not going to get the story from the book.