If American Ultra is a failure, then at least it’s a noble one. The film, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, is about a West Virginia stoner who finds himself the target of a CIA hit operation, suddenly able to fight and shoot guns and basically behave like an action-movie hero. Most notably, though, it is NOT a comedy. The storytelling is completely straight-faced, there’s great care put into the action sequences, it can be mercilessly violent at times, and the screenplay is genuinely interested in making us care about Mike (Eisenberg) and his girlfriend Phoebe’s (Stewart) relationship.

The approach to take such a ridiculous concept and weigh it down with the central character’s fear, confusion, and relationship worries is certainly attention-grabbing, at least for a while. Eisenberg and Stewart are both great in their roles, sharing a strange chemistry that worked for them in Adventureland and continues to work here. Their performances and the movie’s undeniably-strong style make for a pretty engrossing first act, as we wonder what exactly the film intends on being.

Unfortunately, the movie itself doesn’t seem to know either. The longer it runs, the more tonally uncertain it is. Topher Grace’s CIA operative seem to exist in another movie entirely, chewing the scenery everywhere he goes. This sort of thing can work if the movie and the characters seem to be aware of the other character’s insanity, but nobody really reacts to his completely foreign energy, which can be unnerving.

The story has trouble resolving too, eventually conforming to the overdone damsel-in-distress format before completely losing sight of its purpose in a brief epilogue. It’s difficult to discuss without going into spoilers, but it feels like the story settled on a “cool” moment rather than one that made sense for the story.

The strengths and the faults of the movie both likely fall with director Nima Nourizadeh. This is only the second film that he is credited with directing, but his thumbprint is all over it. The aforementioned action sequences are very strong, and Nourizadeh is excellent at utilizing space and staging his camera movements in ways that are engaging and surprising. But as the film’s scope widens in the second and third act, he has trouble figuring out what exactly is centering the movie. Is it an action thriller? Is it about paranoia and identity? Is it about an aspiring cartoonist, or a distrustful government, or is it still just a relationship drama with extra-high stakes? Nourizadeh just can’t successfully balance all of these elements, and while they’ve each got their moments, they remain disparate.

Part of the blame probably lies on screenwriter Max Landis, as well. He only wrote one draft of the film (which he supposedly does with all of his scripts, including the one for the excellent Chronicle), and one can see how American Ultra could be a collection of ideas floating through Landis’ head while he churned out his story. Such a mishmash of concepts and story threads keeps the movie intriguing, but a bit of refinement would have done the material good.

American Ultra isn’t a particularly great film, but at the very least, it’s an interesting one. So many widely distributed movies are bland, “good-enough” exercises that are fully-functional but lacking in soul or originality. Personally, if I were to pick between one of those or a noble failure like American Ultra, I would go with the noble failure each time. There’s a real sense that the creative minds behind this movie wanted to create something special, and that shines through, even when it fails to come together.