Ashby is a coming of age comedy/drama starring The film stars Mickey Rourke (Ashby), Nat Wolff (Ed Wallis), Emma Roberts (Eloise), and Sarah Silverman (June Wallis, Ed’s mom).
The movie starts out with Ashby driving his car near a school crossing lane, when he suddenly passes out and runs his car on to the sidewalk. He goes to a doctor and gets checked out, and his told he only as a few months to live. We then meet Ed in a scene at his school, when he’s given an assignment to interview “an old person”. Ed sees Ashby go into his house after a taxi drops him off. Ed introduces himself, and tells Ashby he would like to interview “an old person” to which Ashby replies he doesn’t know any. Ashby then shuts his door, before re-opening it and calling Ed back, and asking him if he knows how to drive.
One day after Ed drops Ashby off, and goes to look for Ashby’s medicine, he stumbles across multiple passports with multiple names on them. After Ashby falls asleep, Ed searches the house, and finds a room filled with weapons of various types, as well as some ominous chemicals. The next day while Ed is driving Ashby around, Ashby lets Ed know he knows Ed found his weapons room, and makes him promise not to tell anyone (which he eventually does) that he used to be assasin for the CIA, and has killed over 90 people.
The movie also has a sub-plot of Ed trying out (and eventually making) the football team as a Wide Receiver, which upsets one of the current ones. One day a locker area, Ed tries to hide from the current ones by climbing into a locker only to climb out as Eloise walks by and asks him if he just came from another dimension. Eventually we found out Eloise’s mother died suddenly from a brain issue, and she films football players to see how their minds/reactions change over the course of the season.
Later on Ed drops off Ashby at a friend’s house, which turns out to be someone who hired Ashby to perform a hit. Ashby had investigated the original target, and found out he wasn’t an enemy of the state, but rather someone who was going to stop a land development project. Knowing that the target wasn’t an enemy of the state upsets Ashby, and he wants to make amends. He comes out of “retirement” and proceeds to kill 2 of the 3 people who had put the hit on his original target. During the 2nd hit, his photo is taken and sent to someone (but we don’t know who). Ed finds out Ashby had killed 2 more people and begs him not to kill the 3rd.
A few days later during a big football game, Ed scores the winning touchdown and runs to Ashby’s house, where he finds a note from Ashby telling Ed he is giving him his car. It seems that Ashby’s picture during one of the recent killings he performed, went to some higher ups, who order Ashby’s death. They come to his house, and take him to a wooded area and end his life by shooting him in the head.
The movie was a good coming of age story, I felt that Emma Robert’s skills were underused, as she was not in the movie that much and the subplot with her didn’t feel like it was needed (mom just happens to die of a brain issue and her dad has an MRI machine at his house). I liked the movie for the most part, but that particular subplot bored me.
