Plenty of coming-of-age stories choose to focus on the relationship between a precocious, misunderstood teen (usually played by a promising, not-yet-famous young actor) and a world-weary adult who becomes his or her mentor (usually played by a critically respected veteran), but when said mentor is Mickey freakin' Rourke as a retired CIA assassin, you just expect a little more danger from the proceedings. Unfortunately, the movie Ashby is bland and forgettable, and any glimmers of a raw, electrifying performance from Rourke -- an actor nearly incapable of being boring -- are buried underneath a metric ton of barely developed story lines.
To recap as quickly as possible (otherwise we'll be here all day): Rourke is Ashby Holt, a former hit man for the CIA, who befriends his new next-door neighbor, a too-smart-for-his-own-good teen named Ed (Nat Wolff). The scenes with the former feel like a Taken-esque thriller about a man with a particular set of skills, the scenes with the latter feel like a lightweight coming-of-age comedy (complete with low-wattage indie-rock soundtrack), and their scenes together feel like an older-guy-teaches-younger-guy-life-lessons bittersweet drama. And if that's not enough tonal whiplash for you, each of the individual plot lines feels conflicted and unfocused to an almost comical degree. Ed wants to make the football team in order to prove his worth to the freezing-IQ jocks who have a death grip on the school's popularity (never mind that Ed is supposed to be too bookish to care about this), and the movie veers wildly between seeing this pursuit as hilarious (the coach gives absurdly over-the-top speeches), dangerous (we're reminded of football's potential to inflict brain damage), and inspiring (would you believe Ed comes through during a big game?). Oh, and Ashby is torn between killing his old associates for having him murder an innocent man as part of an unrelated business deal, or going cold turkey on assassination in order to get into heaven (he also has a terminal illness).
There are interesting ideas here, but with so much going on, writer-director Tony McNamara doesn't have enough time to connect all of these story threads, much less explore his themes in depth. For example, you'd think that Ed would eventually get involved in Ashby's mission of revenge, but for the most part, he's kept outside of this plot line. It also doesn't help that Ed is by far the least interesting character in the film; we're supposed to root for him, but he accomplishes everything he sets his eye on -- from landing a hot girlfriend to becoming cool via sports -- with minimal onscreen effort. How much can we care about one kid's obstacle-free journey from mild unpopularity to total awesomeness, when the rest of the characters include a dying, remorseful man, a single mom (Sarah Silverman, good in a mostly thankless role) trying to get back into dating, and a teen girl grieving the death of her mother?
About that last character: Eloise is played by Emma Roberts, and while she's more of a collection of quirks than a recognizable human being (she runs experiments using an MRI machine she just happens to have in her basement, she asks Ed at one point if their time together means they're "courting," etc.), damned if the actress isn't able to turn her into a compelling presence anyway. Roberts radiates a sense of authenticity that comes through even in a character this artificial; her face is so expressive that you feel you can almost tell what she's thinking, and when she's given the right material, as in last year's teen drama Palo Alto, just watching her react to other people can be mesmerizing. Ashby was supposed to make us care about an overprivileged doofus, but the real takeaway is that it's another reason to get excited about Emma Roberts' future career.