‘American Assassin’ Trailer: Don’t Mess With Michael Keaton
Alien vs. Predator. Freddy vs. Jason. Kramer vs. Kramer. Batman v Superman. Soon, a new rivalry shall join the ranks of the great cinematic grudge matches. You saw Bradley Cooper plumb new depths of moral compromise with American Sniper in 2014. Now, he’ll go up against his greatest nemesis yet: it’s American Sniper vs. American Assassin — Battle of America.
I regret to inform you that that is not actually a real movie, though if Lionsgate wants to pony up a few million and B-Coops isn’t busy wilding out at Coachella, I could certainly change that. American Assassin does exist, though, and it just got an intense new trailer this morning. The Maze Runner star Dylan O’Brien stars as a man traumatized and furious over his beloved girlfriend’s death in a domestic terrorist attack. He wants to transmute his violent rage into something more productive, so he decides to embark upon a revenge rampage against the terror cell that claimed his lost love’s life. A CIA director (Sanaa Lathan) scoops him up before he can get himself killed and drops him into the elite unit of terrorist-killers run by none other than Michael Keaton. Much of the film feels familiar, but rest assured that the sight of a present-day Michael Keaton doing krav maga and murdering the crap out of enemy combatants does not.
It’s been empirically proven in recent years that U.S. audiences will go see pretty much any movie with American in the title, so this should be a smash. Except American Ultra, which tanked. And American Dreamz got summarily cancelled. American Brawler can barely even be said to exist, come to think of it. Cards on the table — I made up the study on which my original assertion was based. Either way, American Assassin comes to theaters September 15.