History Film / AmericanUltra

* EarnYourHappyEnding: The film ends with Mike and Phoebe braving all manner of obstacles (including each of them being injured by Yates and his group), and the former proposing to the latter before Lasseter recruits him back to the CIA.

* NotWorthKilling: In the end, after a very vicious, dragged out fight, and right when he's held at gun-point, Mike decides to let [[spoiler:Laugher]] go. They went through a lot of similar ordeals, but Mike also discovers [[spoiler:Laugher]] has a lot less control over their personal situation. Whether that's a good or bad reason to let them live is debatable.

* ArtisticLicenseLawEnforcement: After walking out of the supermarket where they just finished taking out a bunch of assassins, leaving the place on fire, Mike and Pheobe walk out of the building and are faced by the SWAT team and other armed troopers. Mike takes this opportunity to propose to Pheobe. She says yes but then the two are tased by a SWAT trooper for delaying them from entering the building, even though the violence was over and they could have easily just walked past Mike and Pheobe without tasing them first. While law enforcement officers are permitted to use force to enter a building if there's a violent crime taking place and people are actively getting in the officers' way, the assassins had already been taken care of and Mike and Pheobe were not actively trying to stop them from entering.

* ChekhovsGunman: The anonymous informant who tells Lasseter that the ULTRA program is being shutdown ends up being [[spoiler:Kruger, who has to step in at the end to clean up loose ends himself]].

* StaticStunGun: Mike and Pheobe are taken out with taser guns after getting engaged.

* VillainHasAPoint: While he isn't an outright villain, [[spoiler: Kruger has pretty legitimate reasons for executing the actually heroic Lasseter along with [[StupidEvil Yates]]. While Yates [[DisproportionateRetribution did overstep his bounds]] by putting the hit on Mike, Lassater exacerbated the situation by activating Mike which prompted Yates to escalate things further. She's only saved by pointing out how she's more useful to the agency alive.]]
* YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness: Krueger's other justfication for [[spoiler:executing Yates. Lasseter escapes a similar fate by invoking CantKillYouStillNeedYou.]]

'''Mike:''' No, I did not call the police, because I have, like, a lot of weed and mushrooms in my car...

-->'''Phoebe''':... That's not what that's called.

-->'''Phoebe''': [''beat''] ... That's not what that's called.

* Malaproper: Mike becomes this after he's shocked to realise just what a capable assassin he is.

* RewatchBonus: At the beginning we see Mike and Phoebe attempt to take a vacation in Hawaii, but his crippling fear of leaving town prevents them from getting on the plane. She insists she's not angry with him, but he says she ''should'' be. [[spoiler:Once we understand that he was psychologically conditioned not to leave town, and that she genuinely loves him, we can see what was really happening. The vacation wasn't important to her, and she's truly not angry with him; she's disappointed that he was unable to overcome his conditioning.]]

* TheDragon: Laugher probably counts, being the TOUGHGUY agent we see doing most of Yates' dirty work.

* YourCheatingHeart: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]]. Mike gets a text from "Rose" asking him to meet and when asked about it by Phoebe, he gets evasive and lies about it being an errand for work. It's basically a blatant setup for TheReveal that Mike is cheating on Phoebe...then it turns out that "Rose" is his ''male'' drug dealer. And that Rose is supplying Mike with a big box of illegal fireworks that he plans to use as part of his proposal to Phoebe.

* CopKiller: The TOUGHGUY assassins Crane and Laugher kill five cops so as to get Mike, who's in police custody inside their station. Upon surveying the carnage after, Lasseter [[LampshadeHanging lampshades]] how stupid this is, since it draws them extreme attention as it's probably the least subtle means possible for this.

* ActionGirl: Lasseter, who kickstarts the plot by revealing Mike's training to him before he can be assassinated by the TOUGHGUY operatives, and later rescues him from the crashed car before Laugher blows it up. She ends up subduing Yates during the final action sequence.

* ManchurianAgent: This might be how the ULTRA program is ''supposed'' to work, but when Victoria Lasseter first makes contact with Mike at the convenience store... He doesn't register anything she says as naught but gibberish.

* OvertOperative: Yates' handling of his operation is not particularly covert, considering that he's hunting down an assert from an experimental and presumably secret project. The official cover story is that Mike and Victoria are sick with a highly contagious disease, but Yates' last gasp solution to the problem was to order a drone strike that would have wiped out the entire town off the map and certainly have attracted the kind of attention that the CIA wouldn't want. Lampshaded when Victoria points out how bizarre it is that Yates' men set a police station on fire.

* VillainHasAPoint: While he isn't an outright villain, [[spoiler: Kruger has pretty legitimate reasons for executing the actually heroic Lassater along with [[StupidEvil Yates]]. While Yates [[DisproportionateRetribution did overstep his bounds]] by putting the hit on Mike, Lassater exacerbated the situation by activating Mike which prompted Yates to escalate things further. She's only saved by pointing out how she's more useful to the agency alive.]]

->''"Babe, I just killed two people!"''
->''"Did you call the cops?!"''
->''"No, I did not call the police, because I have, like, a lot of weed and mushrooms in my car..."''

* OvertOperative: Yates' handling of his operation is not particularly covert, considering that he's hunting down an assert from an experimental and presumably secret project. The official cover story is that Mike and Victoria are sick with a highly contagious disease, but Yates' last gasp solution to the problem was to order a drone strike that would have wiped out the entire town off the map and certainly have attracted the kind of attention that the CIA wouldn't want.

* SpottingTheThread: When Mike recovers from his near-fatal dose of toxic gas, [[spoiler:he asks Phoebe how she knew what the effects of it (and the antidote were). This leads to the reveal that she was a former CIA handler who fell in love with him and gave up her career to stay by his side]]. The character's weapon proficiency when they escape the house is also a tipoff to the audience that said character has HiddenDepths.

* VillainHasAPoint: While he isn't an outright villain, [[spoiler: Kruger has pretty legitimate reasons for executing the actually Heroic Lassater along with [[StupidEvil Yates]]. While Yates [[DisproportionateRetribution did overstep his bounds]] by putting the hit on Mike, Lassater exacerbated the situation by activating Mike which prompted Yates to escalate things further. She's only saved by pointing out how she's more useful to the agency alive.]]

* {{CIA}}: Anyone tied to the government in the film is [=CIA=], and the ULTRA program was a CIA-backed experiment. A few scenes are even set at the headquarters in Langley, VA. Yates himself takes the nickname of "The Company" a little too literally, operating more like an ambitious, young CorruptCorporateExecutive, than a professional government agent with respect for the rule of law.

* TrailersAlwaysLie: The trailers made it seem like the movie is gonna be a bit of romp with a slight humerous tone, but the actual film is surprisingly dark and moody.

* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted hard.

* IdiotBall: Most of the CIA operators who decide that killing Mike, a ''highly-trained, virtually nigh-unstoppable super-soldier himself'', and obliterating any property he happens to be standing in, is a good idea. Simply because he keeps trying to leave his assigned, deep-cover holding zone. As a reminder, 1) Mike's training kicks in after activation only when he is threatened with physical violence, otherwise he is very meek and 2) Mike is still a U.S. citizen... on U.S. soil. Everything being done in this movie is ''highly illegal'', something that Lasseter [[spoiler: and Phoebe]] point out to [[StupidEvil Yates]] repeatedly.
** Phoebe also has to point out to Mike that perhaps next time he really shouldn't ''point out the gun next to the guy trying to kill them'' or ''look back when another assassin yelled "Hey, wait!" at them''

Mike Howell is an average, everyday person who works a boring job at a convenience store, likes getting high with his girlfriend and enjoys a completely unexciting life... except Mike is also secretly a highly-trained, highly dangerous special operative. He just doesn't remember any of this. When a pair of goons try to quietly [[DeadlyEuphemism retire him]], his buried programming comes surging back with a vengeance, causing the man in charge of the operation to pull out all the stops to put him down for good. Even if it means leveling an entire small town to do it.

* CaliforniaDoubling: Set in West Virginia, filmed in Louisiana. Covering it up wasn't too hard because most of the film happens at night.

''American Ultra'' is a 2015 comedy/action film starring Creator/JesseEisenberg and Creator/KristenStewart, about a pot-smoking convenience store clerk who find his world change in an instant with the discovery of dormant abilities.

** Sheriff Watts, who questions Mike and Phoebe when they drive back from the aborted Hawaiian vacation, [[spoiler:dies by Crane's hand after stalling her to allow both of them to escape the police station]].