The spy yarn “American Assassin” gives new meaning to the phrase “all killer, no filler,” as it delivers its action at regular, bloody intervals, with minimal breaks for the messiness of character development.
This adaptation of Vince Flynn’s airport-friendly best-seller opens with a rather nasty example of “fridging” — the story device of killing off a female character as motivation for the lead male character. In this case, it’s in Ibiza where Mitch Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) proposes to his girlfriend, Katrina (Charlotte Vega), only to see her shot dead when a terrorist group machine-guns the beach.
Mitch goes underground, growing his beard and honing his weapons skills, to try to take down the terrorist leader, Adnan Al-Mansur (Shahid Ahmed), who planned the Ibiza attack.