American Assassin * * 1/2

This has a pretty simple scenario which they probably should have stuck to. By the time they get round to complicating the story we’re so happily dumbed down it’s hard to change gears into think mode.   But it's back to spectacular dumbness toward the end, with nuclear devices being detonated just off the coast of Rome (nessun problema!).  At least, I think it was Rome, they might have moved on at that stage.  Can’t remember.

Yeah, it's personal.

Anyway, it all starts off with a young man losing his girlfriend in a monstrous terrorist attack at a beach resort. Rather than breaking him the event turns him into a man of determined vengeance.  So the CIA decide he’d be a handy recruit and they link him up to an old boy who can teach him.

Then they’re off to the middle-east to kill some terrorists - what fun!   But the silly Russians have gone and lost a load of stuff you make nuclear weapons from, so there is a diversion to allow the CIA to clean up the Ruskie mess.

Then there’s a pretty girl with an alluring accent who can hurt you bad. I couldn’t figure out which side she was on but in the end I think she was a goodie.

Incidentally, the head of CIA - to whom hundreds of agents must respond - is a bossy boots African American woman in her mid twenties, which is exactly how you’d imagine the head of the CIA, right?