American Ultra (2015)
12-month trend
12-month trend
Monthly article views
2025-09 to 2026-08
A stoner discovers he is actually a sleeper agent in a secret government program.
The story
Mike Howell is a stoner living in Liman, West Virginia, who works as a convenience store clerk and plans to propose to his girlfriend, Phoebe Larson. However, he suffers from intense panic attacks whenever he tries to leave town. Meanwhile, CIA Agent Victoria Lasseter receives a warning that Mike, the sole survivor of her 'Wiseman' Ultra program, is being targeted for elimination by a rival agent, Adrian Yates. Lasseter travels to Liman to 'activate' Mike using code words, but Mike fails to understand their significance, leading to a tense situation where Mike's latent training begins to surface as he is attacked by 'Toughguy' agents.
Full plot (contains spoilers)
Mike Howell, a stoner in West Virginia, is targeted by Adrian Yates' 'Toughguy' agents because he is a sleeper agent from the 'Wiseman' program. CIA Agent Victoria Lasseter attempts to activate him, but he is confused by the process. After Mike kills two Toughguys with a spoon, Yates sends more agents to kill him and his girlfriend, Phoebe. Phoebe is eventually revealed to be a CIA agent who was assigned to be Mike's handler but fell in love with him. Yates quarantines the town, framing Mike and Lasseter as disease carriers. After a series of violent encounters involving lethal gas and drone strikes, Mike learns his memories were erased due to a criminal record. He eventually arranges an exchange with Yates to save Phoebe, defeating several agents in a grocery store. After a final confrontation where Yates is executed by his superior, Krueger, Mike and Phoebe are shown six months later in Manila, working together on a CIA assignment.
- First release year
- 2015
- Runtime (minutes)
- 96
- Production countries
- United States
- Original languages
- English
- Directors
- Nima Nourizadeh
- Writers
- Max Landis · writer
- Cast and characters
- Jesse Eisenberg · Mike Howell; Kristen Stewart · Phoebe Larson; Topher Grace; Connie Britton; Walton Goggins; John Leguizamo; Bill Pullman; Tony Hale
- Genres
- action; comedy
- Themes
- mind control; government surveillance; memory erasure
- Tone and mood
- anarchic; surreal; violent
- Setting
- Liman, West Virginia and Langley, Virginia during the modern era.
- Premise and plot tags
- spy comedy; action comedy; stoner comedy
- Content notes
- violence
- Reception
- The film received mixed reviews from critics, with praise for the premise and cast, but criticism that it 'fails to live up to its potential'. It underperformed at the box office.
- Reported review scores
- Rotten Tomatoes · score: 44% · review count: 174; Metacritic · score: 50 · scale: 100 · review count: 31
- Production trivia
- The film was the first to be released with a DTS:X soundtrack.; The production had to deal with snakes, alligators and torrential rain while filming in Louisiana.; The marketing campaign included a website offering free Marijuana to people with existing prescriptions.
Film metadata comes from the open sources listed in Credits & Contact. Catalogue details may be incomplete.
Your lists
Loading your lists…