“What is it you think we do here?” the jaded Cold War vet asks the angry recruit. “Kill people who deserve to be killed.” Yeah, pretty much.
Here is the first trailer for American Assassin, starring Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a burgeoning CIA “ghost” whose parents died when he was 14 and whose new fiancee is wiped out by terrorists on a beach moments after he proposed. Kicked out of multiple boarding schools, he lands an interview with the deputy director of the CIA (Sanaa Lathan) who looks at his file, looks him in the eye and proclaims, “I know exactly what to do with you.”
Enter Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton), the grizzled veteran of covert geopolitical actions who — reluctantly, of course — takes Rapp under his wing. “He’s ready, Stan,” Lathan’s Irene Kennedy insists. “He’s not ready,” he replies. “But he will be.” They and Rapp will discover a pattern in the violence that leads them to a joint mission with a lethal Turkish agent (Shiva Negar) to stop a mysterious operative (Taylor Kitsch) intent on starting a world war in the Middle East.
Directed by Michael Cuesta from a script by Stephen Schill and Michael Finch and Edward Zwick & Marshall Herskovitz, the film is is based on the 15-book Mitch Rapp series by the late author Vince Flynn. Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler are the producers. Lionsgate and CBS Films will release American Assassin on September 15. Check out the trailer and tell us what you think.
