In "American Ultra," Jesse Eisenberg is a secret agent, but it's miles removed from James Bond.

Eisenberg's character, Mike Howell, is a convenience store clerk, also a stoner and a "slacker." But the twist is that he is actually a highly-trained government operative and Kristen Stewart is his stoner girlfriend.

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The actor who will soon take the mantle of Lex Luthor talked to Screen Rant about his role and how his character would actually relate to the audience.

"Maybe the end goal is different, but the process should be the same, which is to try to create some realism in a heightened situation," Eisenberg explains. "Like the reason 'American Ultra' is so funny is because our characters are having these realistic reactions to these terrifying situations. So you know, in a typical action movie the characters would be confidently handling these otherwise terrifying situations, but our characters are actually terrified, and when people are coming to kill us, we're asking them to 'please stop.' Like a regular person would do in this situation. So I think like the comedy comes from playing it realistically and having the context be very funny."

The reviews are out, and the big question is, did the twist actually work?

One of the first reviews came from Variety and they state that the premise actually works in the first part of the movie. Before the twist is known, the humor stemmed from Howell's stoner nature.

"The disconnect between Mike's molasses-paced cognitive processes and killing-machine reflexes makes for some clever comedy early on, as his lower brain keeps getting him out of jams his higher brain got him into."

However, the "misplaced spy" narrative has been used time and again and the promise of "American Ultra" faded into the same stereotype:

"(Director) Nourizadeh helms a few of the action sequences with some panache, particularly a late brawl in a grocery store, but he never manages to pin down a consistent tone, mashing up a variety of cinematic styles without ever nailing any of them." Thus, "Ultra" was lost in the muddle.

Another review by NJ was a lot less forgiving. They note that the movie was "stitched-together" and "all eye and no heart." It also felt too much "like Nourizadeh's audition for an even bigger, dumber movie."

TagsJesse Eisenberg, American Ultra, Mike Howell, Lex Luthor