“American Ultra” tries to combine a sweet, slacker romance with a slick, super-violent action flick. If that sounds jarring to you, that’s probably because it is.
Mixing such disparate genres requires a more deft hand than the one on display from director Nima Nourizadeh, whose previous feature is the found-footage, high-school pukefest “Project X.” “American Ultra” has far more sophisticated production values than that first film then again, so does your average wedding video but it’s just as bludgeoning. Yet the script from Max Landis (“Chronicle”) starts out with all the grungy, morose trappings of your typical small-town, indie drama.