Eisenberg, Stewart team up for stoner thriller

“American Ultra” addresses a question that often arises during summer blockbuster season: did someone just get high and scribble out this illogical plot?

Mike (Jesse Eisenberg) is a stoner who works at a sleepy convenience store in an underpopulated West Virginia town. Despite his constant access to this medicinal relaxant, he has panic attacks and can’t board a plane to Hawaii with his girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart).

As it turns out, Mike might have commitment issues because he’s also is a CIA sleeper agent, trained to kill for the government. To unlock his nascent facility for dealing death via soupspoon, he needs only a few words in code from his handler, played by Connie Britton (that her flowing “Friday Night Lights” locks are kept bunned up throughout the film is the surest indictment of the CIA’s creeping fascism).

Stewart (coming off a career redefining role in “The Clouds of Sils Maria”) is very good again as Mike’s stronger half. In one excellent scene, Mike spoons Phoebe in their bed and she registers that he is going to sloppily kiss the back of her neck a beat before he does it, building in a flash the intimacy of their years together.

Against this tenderness is heavy violence. Mike and Phoebe are defective assets marked for death by a bloodletting CIA honcho (Topher Grace). He unleashes a team of black ops psychopaths to eliminate them, including the well-named Laugher (Walton Goggins, turned a few clicks more manic than his character on TV’s “Justified”). They battle with guns and more improvised weapons-heads are smacked open with hammers and metal dustpans are wielded like machetes.

That the CIA’s operation to find one man requires a fake “super typhoid” FEMA emergency, several dozen jump-suited soldiers of fortune and a drone strike is a droll commentary on the American military tendency to slightly overreact to perceived threats.

It doesn’t execute all of them, but the self-reflexive “American Ultra” at least brings a couple bright ideas to the August doldrums. Mike’s existential line – the third joint into his shift at the dilapidated Cash and Carry – could just as easily be from Matt Damon’s “Bourne” films: “Am I real or am I robot?”

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“American Ultra” is showing at the Sonoma 9 Cinemas. Rated R. Running time 1:35. Visit www.cinemawest.com.