Summary
- Michael Keaton’s career has gone through many different phases, from comedic actor to dramatic performer.
- Despite initial box-office failures, some of Keaton’s films, like “Jack Frost” and “American Assassin,” have gained popularity and found success later on.
- “American Assassin,” starring Dylan O’Brien and Michael Keaton, has experienced a resurgence in popularity on Netflix, leading to speculation of a potential sequel or television series.
Michael Keaton has had many different lives throughout his interesting and lengthy career. His career has gone through so many incarnations over the past 30 years that most people who are under the age of 30 are probably unaware or have forgotten that Keaton first gained stardom in the 1980s as an effusive, fast-talking comedic actor in the films Gung Ho, Mr. Mom, and Night Shift.
In the late 1980s, Keaton underwent a major transformation, beginning with his acclaimed dramatic performance in the 1988 drama film Clean and Sober, where Keaton plays a drug addict who attempts to get clean. Despite the fact that the well-reviewed Clean and Sober was a box-office failure, Keaton’s searing performance impressed the film’s distributor, Warner Bros., enough for Keaton to be cast as Batman in the eponymous blockbuster 1989 film.
Several of Keaton’s initially unpopular films have had extended lives, including the 1998 Christmas fantasy film Jack Frost, which was a box-office disaster upon its theatrical release but has subsequently become a holiday staple. The most recent and unconventional example is the 2017 action thriller American Assassin, in which Keaton, who was 66 when the film was released, plays a grizzled black-ops agent.
While American Assassin, which grossed approximately $67 million at the worldwide box office against a production cost of $33 million, was received by audiences and critics with a general sense of indifference upon its initial release and for several years afterward, the film has recently experienced an unexpected resurgence of popularity through Netflix, where American Assassin has become one of the streaming service’s most-watched films.
Dylan O’Brien’s Mitch Rapp Is An Effective Action Hero in American Assassin
American Assassin, which is based on the 2010 novel of the same name by Vince Flynn, stars Dylan O’Brien as Mitch Rapp, a talented but undisciplined counterterrorism expert, who, after witnessing a terrorist attack that resulted in the death of Mitch’s girlfriend, becomes a black ops CIA recruit under the leadership of CIA agent Stan Hurley, played by Michael Keaton.
Before being cast in American Assassin, O’Brien, who was 26 when the film was released, was best known for his roles in the Maze Runner films and the Teen Wolf television series. Just as American Assassin was intended to be the first film in a proposed series of Mitch Rapp films, the film was also designed to establish O’Brien as a cinematic action star. Indeed, the actor signed a contract to star in several American Assassin sequels. Of course, the film’s disappointing box-office performance prevented this from happening.
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However, American Assassin nonetheless serves as an effective showcase for O’Brien, who, in the role of Mitch, transcends his previous teen idol image by delivering a dramatic and physically credible performance, especially in his various scenes with Keaton, against whom O’Brien holds his own.
Moreover, O’Brien generates a considerable amount of sympathy for Mitch, especially in the aftermath of his girlfriend’s death, for which the actor’s projection of grief effectively establishes the basis for his character’s obsessive need for revenge. O’Brien’s performance in American Assassin suggests that he is deserving of better roles than he’s been given so far in his career. If the renewed popularity of American Assassin leads to a revival of the would-be franchise, the now 32-year-old O’Brien looks and seems ably suited to reprise the role of Mitch in any future film or television series.
Michael Keaton Is Convincing as a Grizzled CIA Veteran
Michael Keaton’s performance in American Assassin is emblematic of how the acerbic wit and manic intensity that defined Keaton’s comedic persona in the 1980s has seamlessly carried over to his now familiar grizzled mentor screen persona, for which he has proven himself to be an expert at projecting deception and moral ambiguity.
Keaton, who was 66 when American Assassin was released in 2017, is especially convincing and compelling in the film as Stan Hurley, a Cold War veteran and former Navy Seal turned black-ops CIA agent. Keaton has excellent chemistry in the movie with Dylan Brien, whose character, counterterrorism expert and eventual assassin Mitch Rapp, is mentored and trained by Hurley for the purpose of stopping the impending detonation of a nuclear bomb.
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Moreover, American Assassin, which feels like it’s assembled from the parts of various other spy thriller films, provides clear evidence of how Keaton has, in his later career, attained the rare ability to transcend seemingly dispensable, thankless roles and make them distinctive and memorable. The actor brings a heightened level of authenticity and psychic weight to American Assassin, making the film’s improbable stakes seem frightening and real. This enables American Assassin to avoid being the cinematic equivalent of an action comic book.
Netflix Has Sparked Renewed Interest in an American Assassin Franchise
Throughout his career, Michael Keaton has starred in many films that were initially unsuccessful, both commercially and critically, upon their theatrical release but subsequently became popular through cable television and home video. However, American Assassin may mark the first film of Keaton’s to experience a resurgence of popularity through Netflix, where American Assassin has belatedly become one of his most popular films.
Moreover, as American Assassin was originally intended to launch a franchise based on Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp political thriller book series, the streaming success of the film has fueled speculation regarding the possibility of an American Assassin sequel, either through a second film or a television series.
Indeed, there seems to be a direct connection between the factors behind the film’s box-office failure and its renewed popularity on Netflix. While the modestly budgeted American Assassin lacked the scale to become an action blockbuster upon its theatrical release and originality to be anything else, on Netflix, which has seemingly become a resurrection zone for overlooked and unappreciated studio films, American Assassin fits in perfectly.
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