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True Memoirs of an International Assassin

I’ll say this about the latest Netflix Original Comedy, “True Memoirs of an International Assassin”: It looks and feels like a real movie. Unlike so many Happy Madison ventures, including Netflix Originals “The Ridiculous Six” and “The Do-Over,” this flick has a director who considered visual composition and pacing, and someone actually wrote a screenplay. The script by Jeff Morris, which was on the notorious Black List of the best unproduced screenplays, is surprisingly plot-heavy, something also uncommon for other films starring Kevin James and Adam Sandler, which typically amount to little more than a series of jokes loosely strung together by an unbelievable plot. Ultimately, “True Memoirs of an International Assassin” isn’t entertaining enough to recommend, but it’s certainly not the torturous experience of recent James vehicles like “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” or “Pixels,” and parts of it actually work.

The star of “The King of Queens” (an admitted guilty pleasure in reruns for this writer) plays Sam Larson, a cubicle-tethered schlub who has few friends and a horrible boss. He imagines himself the lead of a book he’s writing in his spare time called Memoirs of an International Assassin. Getting advice from a bar mate and former soldier named Amos (Ron Rifkin) about the ins and outs of covert ops, Sam delivers an entertaining, action-packed adventure novel to his new publisher Kylie (Kelen Coleman), who promises “not to change a word.” She doesn’t. She just adds the word “True” to the front of the title, sending Sam’s real life spinning. Now, he’s appearing on talk shows and trying to defend a story of international espionage which he made up. Of course, it’s not long before he’s kidnapped and thrust into the middle of a high-danger situation in Venezuela.

The specific details of the international portion of Sam’s adventure are pretty clever in their complexity. Sam first meets El Toro (Andy Garcia), who wants a crime lord named Masovich (Andrew Howard) murdered. Masovich intercepts Sam and orders him to assassinate the President (Kim Coates), who then intercepts Sam and orders him to assassinate El Toro. It's the circle of espionage. Sam, who most people think is the international assassin known as “The Ghost,” gains a partner in a freedom fighter named Rosa Bolivar (Zulay Henao) and Rob Riggle and Leonard Earl Howze pop up as a couple of U.S. agents who almost watch Sam/Ghost’s current dilemma with skeptical joy. They take wagers as to whether or not he’s actually an assassin and eat popcorn while watching surveillance footage of him trying just to survive.

For the most part, “True Memoirs of an International Assassin” is just crowded enough to be an entertaining diversion. The problem is that Morris and director Jeff Wadlow go back to the same jokes way too many times—we see multiple scenes of Sam imagining action sequences that don’t really happen and there’s an odd habit in the final act to pepper the soundtrack with Spanish-language versions of American pop songs. The bigger problem is a distinct lack of actual laughs from those jokes, even the first time we hear them. I chuckled once or twice at Riggle & Howze, but it’s tempting to not even categorize the film as a comedy. It’s a melting pot of a diversion, too thin in any specific genre department to really register. It’s not action-packed enough, not funny enough, and the characters aren’t memorable enough.

Having said that, it’s never eye-rollingly unfunny, offensive or blatantly stupid. Perhaps this is a low bar to clear, but it’s a time-killer, something that could make a couple hours go by faster if you’re in need of something to speed up the clock. Movies should do more than just kill your time, and this one could have with smarter dialogue and actual characters, but there’s something to be said about a distraction from the international drama of this week, true or not.

Brian Tallerico

Brian Tallerico is the Managing Editor of RogerEbert.com, and also covers television, film, Blu-ray, and video games. He is also a writer for Vulture, The Playlist, The New York Times, and GQ, and the President of the Chicago Film Critics Association.

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Film Credits

True Memoirs of an International Assassin movie poster

True Memoirs of an International Assassin (2016)

Rated NR

Cast

Kevin James as Sam Larson

Zulay Henao as Rosa Bolivar

Andy García as El Toro

Kim Coates as President Cueto

Kelen Coleman as Kylie Applebaum

Emilie Ullerup as Stephanie

Ron Rifkin as Amos

Rob Riggle as William Cobb

Director

Writer

Cinematographer

Editor

Composer

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