"Ashby" Movie Review

A coming of age / coming to terms story of an unusual friendship.

It's a Saturday night and I'm sick and have a lot of homework to do, so I obviously watched a movie. I was so excited when I saw this movie on demand, because I saw the trailer a few months ago and was intrigued. 
    The movie starred Mickey Rourke, Nat Wolff, Sarah Silverman, and Emma Roberts. In the movie, Rourke plays a retired assassin and Wolff his awkward teenage neighbor. The two form a bond over the course of the film that is unbelievably believable. 
    Nat Wolff's character, Ed, plays the new kid at school, after he recently moved from Oregon because of his parents divorce. His mom, Sarah Silverman, is single and seeking companionship constantly, which overtime starts to show her low self-esteem, when she starts to settle for anyone. Ed's dad on the other hand, is a constant let down and pretends everything okay over Skype.
    In school, Ed has to do a 2,000 word paper on wisdom he got from an old person. Ed asks his new neighbor, Ashby Holt, who says he was a "napkin salesman". Ed later discovers on his own that he's actually an assassin for the country, who's killed 96 men. Ashby is much more interested in using Ed as a chauffeur than having him as an interviewer. The two start becoming friends; Ed asking Ashby for advice on his new lady friend, Eloise, (Emma Roberts), whom is almost as quirky as Ed. Ed also needs help with getting on the football team, as he has no one rooting for him or helping prepare for tryouts. Ed starts to become very personal with Ashby, at one point sharing how dumfounded he is that Ashby supposedly didn't feel bad about any of the lives he took, saying they were all well deserved. But even Ashby starts to develop doubts about his past decisions, and attempts to rewrite some of his wrongs.
     I still can't figure out what genre this movie is, but I think I'm just going to put it under the list of one's everyone should see. It's a story of unusual friendship and has you thinking about what matters most in life. You'll get over the slow beginning, as the rest of the movie is fast and interesting.

---