Mike Howell’s life is more or less ordinary. He works at a minimart in small-town America, living in a cloud of weed as he battles his angst and dreams up ideas for comic books in hopes of offering his girlfriend Phoebe a better life. But what Mike doesn’t know is that he’s not just an ordinary dude. He’s caught in the middle of a spectacular CIA plot and is about to learn some astonishing things about himself…

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It’s a fun idea: imagine if American Ultra were an unofficial sequel to Adventureland, the great 2009 indie movie with Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart. Now a couple and over their initial post-adolescent passion, they are caught in a mundane existence, their brains fried by weed as they head towards an uncertain future. Until a Hollywood dimension adds color by transforming their lives into a Tarantino action movie calibrated towards fans of Kingsman and Pineapple Express. It’s no surprise then that this movie was directed by Nima Nourizadeh, the maker of Project X, who goes out of his way to compose a chaotic melody of scenes, punch lines, characters and stylish effects with the single aim of persuading the audience that the movie is cool. In reality, although often cute, American Ultra is mainly insignificant and clumsy in addition to being desperately lacking in imagination.