American Ultra(2015)

Plot Summary

• Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) is a stoner who lives in the sleepy town of Liman, West Virginia, where he works as a convenience store clerk. He is planning to propose to his longtime girlfriend, Phoebe Larson (Kristen Stewart), on a trip to Hawaii. He is unable to board the plane, as he suffers from intense panic attacks anytime he tries to leave town. He does not understand why Phoebe puts up with him. He thinks he is in the way of Phoebe, who should be moving on and up in the world.In Langley, Virginia, CIA Agent Victoria Lasseter (Connie Britton) receives a coded warning that Mike, the sole survivor of her "Wiseman" Ultra program, is to be eliminated by her rival, Adrian Yates (Topher Grace), and his similar "Toughguy" agents. Adrian was made supervisor of the program after Lasseter was relieved of duty. He tells her that he is eliminating Mike as he keeps trying to leave town, which is a security breach and he is just doing his job by eliminating him. Feeling a duty to protect Mike, Lasseter travels to Liman and "activates" Mike through a series of code words. Mike fails to understand their significance, and she leaves in resigned frustration.Mike finds two Toughguys interfering with his car and is attacked, but his training activates, and he kills them using a spoon. He calls Phoebe, who reaches him just as Sheriff Watts (Stuart Greer) arrives. Yates sends two Toughguy operatives, Laugher (Walton Goggins) and Crane (Monique Ganderton), to kill Mike and Phoebe at the sheriff station, but they evade Laugher (by locking him in a cell) and kill Crane (with her own hand grenade that she had lobbed at Mike) before escaping to the home of Mike's drug dealer Rose (John Leguizamo). Mike becomes unnerved by an array of facts he suddenly knows regarding military strategy. He also realizes he has very little memory prior to living in the town with Phoebe, wondering aloud why he never questioned this before. Adrian puts the town on lock-down as he realizes that Lasseter has activated Mike, hence she is in Liman. Lasseter calls Adrian and tells him that she is going to take him down.Yates quarantines the city and puts Lasseter and Mike's pictures on the local news (the news says that Lasseter is carrying a deadly virus which she got from test monkeys and has passed it on to Mike. Citizens need to report them both to the authorities immediately). Lasseter convinces her former assistant, Petey Douglas (Tony Hale), to air drop her a weapon using a drone (he also provides a dossier on all of Yates's assets). Yates finds out and threatens to charge Petey with treason. Lasseter wants Petey to go public with the operation and inform Kruger, but Petey declines to help.Yates then attacks Rose's house with two Toughguys using a lethal gas (Riofloxin). The agents kill Rose and his two guards, Big Harold (Lavell Crawford) and Wuinzin, before Mike and Phoebe kill the attackers and she rescues Mike from the gas, which she is familiar with (She keeps Mike awake, if he sleeps, he dies). When pressed for answers on her knowledge of the gas, Phoebe reluctantly reveals she was a CIA agent assigned to be Mike's handler, leaving him heartbroken.Laugher ambushes the duo and captures Phoebe. Mike is about to be set on fire by Laugher, but Mike is rescued by Lasseter and insists on returning to his house. She tells him that he volunteered for Wiseman due to his criminal record and subsequently had his memories erased. He also learns that Phoebe was to get him settled in Liman and then leave but chose to stay because she genuinely fell in love. Lasseter explains that his panic attacks, including his fear of leaving town, were implanted to keep him safe.Yates' army liaison, Otis, joins a Toughguy to attack Mike's house. Mike and Lasseter kill them (Mike uses the frying pan bullet trick), prompting Yates to order a drone strike on the entire block. Petey calls off the drone strike at the last minute and then secretly reports the situation to Yates' superior, Raymond Krueger (Bill Pullman).Mike contacts Yates and arranges to exchange himself for Phoebe at a local grocery store. He attacks the store, killing or incapacitating multiple Toughguys before fighting and defeating Laugher, whom he spares when Mike learns that he is a mentally unbalanced man who was forcibly conscripted by Yates. Phoebe escapes from Yates when Lasseter attacks him, but Krueger arrives and stops her.Phoebe and Mike leave the store under gunpoint of multiple law enforcement officers, as he proposes to her.In a forested area, Krueger has Yates and Lasseter bound and kneeling. Yates argues that what he was doing would have been okay with Krueger, despite the deaths of innocent people, if the results had been successful, and Krueger agrees. Yates, smugly smiles and stands, but is executed by Krueger for his failure. Krueger admits that he had informed Lasseter of Yates' plan as a courtesy, but he did not expect her to intervene. She points out that, by taking out seventeen Toughguys, Mike is proof of the success of the Wiseman program and a potentially valuable asset. Six months later, handled by Lasseter and Petey, Mike and Phoebe are in Manila, confident and happy together as they carry out a CIA assignment.

Storyline

• Small-town stoner Mike Howell ( Jesse Eisenberg ) spends most of his time getting high and writing a graphic novel about a superhero monkey. What Mike doesn't know is that he was trained by the CIA to be a lethal killing machine. When the agency targets him for termination, his former handler activates his latent skills, turning the mild-mannered slacker into a deadly weapon. Now, the utterly surprised Mike must use his newfound abilities to save himself and his girlfriend from getting wasted by the failed test subjects that are sent after him by the CIA. — Mr.Moiz