‘Ultra’ violent stoner action-comedy

The likably awkward chemistry of Kristen Stewart and Jesse Eisenberg remains intact in “American Ultra,” a violent stoner action-comedy that’s half “Pineapple Express,” half “The Bourne Identity,” and not as good as either.

Stewart and Eisenberg, who starred together in the splendidly low-key summer comedy “Adventureland,” again come together as an appealing, mutually mopheaded tandem that matches Eisenberg’s stuttering unease with Stewart’s deadpan cool.

They play a flannel-wearing West Virginia couple, Mike and Phoebe, happy together despite Mike’s weed habit, perpetual apologizing and panic attacks from just about anything that upsets his seemingly innate inertia. Looking at a car that’s crashed into a tree, he wonders to Phoebe, placating and devoted, if he’s the tree and she’s the car.

The small-town, low-stakes drama of “American Ultra” is convincing in the beginning, thanks to the two stars. But it’s a setup.

Unbeknownst to Mike, a convenience store clerk, he’s an elite killing machine trained by the CIA, a decommissioned government experiment. Few in the movies would be a more unlikely secret agent than Eisenberg. Did the program include Michael Cera? Was Woody Allen in charge?

Switching to Langley, the film, directed by Nima Nourizadeh (“Project X”) and written by Max Landis (“Chronicle”), fills in the backstory. A petulant young agent (Topher Grace) has risen in the ranks and now wants to eliminate evidence of the experiment that gave Mike his secret talents, overseen by Connie Britton’s more sympathetic Victoria Lasseter.

To prevent her former student’s death, she sneaks to the convenience store and activates Mike with a few code words. When a handful of thugs come to kill him, Mike is astounded to find himself expertly stabbing one with a spoon. Afterward, he cowers behind a lamppost, looking at the bloody wreckage: “I have, like, a lot of anxiety about this,” he tells Phoebe.

Much mayhem ensues, surprisingly violent and cartoonish in its extremes. The small town comes entirely under siege. “American Ultra” is a stoner’s paranoia come to life. A toothless Walter Goggins joins the strong ensemble as the nuttiest of the CIA’s small army, along with John Leguizamo as a local drug dealer.

The assembled talent could use more character development and a little more wit in place of the sadistic, fun-draining comicbook action scenes that increasingly co-opts the comedy, which is too dependent on the eventually tiresome joke of Eisenberg as action hero.

But “American Ultra” has its simple genre charms, thanks significantly to its entertaining cast and leading pair. Stewart, in particular, looks like she’s punching below her weight class. As if often the case, Stewart’s the best thing in the movie. And she and Eisenberg remain lazy losers we can love, Bonnie and Clyde for a more laid-back generation.

“American Ultra,” a Lionsgate release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for “strong bloody violence, language throughout, drug use and some sexual content.” Running time: 96 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

A movie about a wisecracking grandma and her teen granddaughter, racing around in a beat-up car to find $600 by nightfall. You might think it sounds like any number of mediocre road comedies out there, full of trite generational gags and sporting a sappy, all-is-forgiven ending.

You’d be very wrong.

“Grandma” is, instead, a brisk, bittersweet and moving film, rightfully devoted to displaying the singular talent of Lily Tomlin — especially her striking ability to fuse acerbity and crankiness with empathy and humanity, and to find the essential lovability way, way down at the core of an unlikeable person.

The film, directed and written by Paul Weitz, is also about abortion, a theme that could easily have taken over every line and frame. But somehow, it leaves us thinking even more about what it means to be someone’s mother, someone’s daughter, someone’s granddaughter — and what it means to grow old. Credit for that last part goes to Tomlin and also to Sam Elliott, who darned near steals the show in a scene with Tomlin that, well, they should immediately start showing in acting classes — to demonstrate what two actors can convey in just a few minutes about a lifelong relationship.

Tomlin is Elle, a brilliant poet and professor who, perhaps due to her facility with words, doesn’t mince them. We meet Elle in her living room, mid-breakup with her younger girlfriend (Judy Greer). “You were a footnote,” Elle tells her lover, with resigned honesty more than spite. But in the shower later, alone, she weeps.

We soon learn Elle is still suffering the loss of her longtime romantic partner, Violet, which explains much of her bitterness. She’s also clearly at odds with her stressed, workaholic daughter, Judy (Marcia Gay Harden, pitch-perfect). But when teen granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner, appealingly natural) comes knocking, Elle’s ready to help.

Turns out Sage needs an abortion, and fast; the only free appointment is that evening, and it’s $600, which has Elle immediately ranting about how it’s impossible to get a reasonably priced abortion these days. Sage has no money, but doesn’t want to bring her judgmental mother into the picture. Elle herself is fairly broke, scraping by on a college writer-in-residence gig. She’s recently paid off her debt and cut her credit cards into scraps, which now serve as wind chimes.

Elle is angry — as we see in an unnervingly funny mini-breakdown she has in a coffee shop — but not at Sage. First, she’s angry at Sage’s obnoxious, good-for-nothing boyfriend, who has no intention of contributing to the abortion until Elle pretty much beats him — physically — into submission and grabs the few dollars he has. They also try Elle’s old friend Deathy (Laverne Cox, of “Orange is the New Black”), a tattoo artist who can only offer a free tattoo.

Elle has one more idea: Karl, an old flame. She shows up on his doorstep, and at first, it seems like it’ll be an easy solution. But then the layers of the onion get peeled back — suddenly, startlingly. Karl’s laconic demeanor and sexy drawl make it all the more shocking when his emotion — rage, resentment, and more — comes gushing forth. The scene is not to be missed.

Of course, Judy (Harden) eventually must emerge, and she’s a trip: She works at a treadmill desk, and has espresso running through her veins. But Judy isn’t the shrew she initially seems. In one of the better scenes, three generations of women come together for a moment — very brief — in which it becomes clear that even in the nuttiest families, there are bonds that supersede all that craziness.

We won’t spoil the story, but in the end, it’s just Elle on the screen. As it should be. Tomlin, at 75, is operating at full throttle, and she deserves that final shot, all alone.

“Grandma,” a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America “for language and some drug use.” Running time: 79 minutes. Three stars out of four. (AP)