Genre: Action/Superhero
Director: Jake Kasdan
Writer: Chad Taylor
Cast: Timothee Chalamet, Rami Malek, Lili Reinhart, Owen Wilson, Melanie Lynskey, RJ Cyler, Isabelle Nelisse, Nicholas Hamilton
Plot: For his birthday, Max Sadler (Timothée Chalamet) and his close circle of friends celebrate at a bowling alley. In the midst of their game, Max is perturbed by a group of his female peers entering the joint – particularly Chloe (Lili Reinhart), whom he has had a crush on for years. With a chance to win the game with a strike, Max nervously approaches the lane – with him periodically looking at the girls on the other side of the alley hoping they’ll see. After doing his wind-up, Max holds on to the ball to long and lets go of it on his upswing, sending it crashing into the ceiling and breaking a light and then landing with a loud thud.
From Max’s perspective, we see all eyes turn to him. However, they all look confused and start whispering to each other. His best friend Will (RJ Cyler) screams out Max’s name as if he is looking for him. Max responds but hearing his voice only prompts everyone to freak out even more. With the place in hysterics, Max goes over to a mirror and discovers he is invisible to the others. He runs to the bathroom to splash water on his face hoping that will do something but it is unproductive. He runs back into the lanes area and pleads that someone get help. With the panic building, he breaks down to his knees and talks about how scared he is. All of a sudden, the invisibility wears off and every seeing him shaking on the ground on the verge of tears. Will, wide-eyed and in shock, yells “WHAT THE F-” into a smash cut to the opening credits.
Max’s dad Marshall (Owen Wilson) drives him to the doctor to get him checked out. He sounds skeptical of Max’s story completely and suggests that it might be some late form of puberty that is affecting him, although Max insists It is different. The doctor says that he sees no sign of physiological distress and is unsure the cause of the supposed episode. When asked if he’s taking any medicine, only the pills he takes for his seizures. He says that if something happens again to contact the office immediately.
The next day at his high school team’s football game, Max is bored as usual with little chance of getting in the game. With the game whittling down and still close, Max gets excited when the coach calls his name and he starts to feel a tingling feeling in his body. It turns out that the receiver who plays ahead of him damaged his cleats and coach wants Max to retrieve a back-up pair from the locker room. As he jogs towards the locker room, he realizes that he can run at a speed faster than any human possibly could. In seconds, he goes to the locker room and back within seconds and tells the coach he could not find the cleats – knowing he is the back-up option. Coach tells Max that he has to go into the game, with the team on its final drive to win the game.
Max slots in as a receiver and blows past the defender at the hike of the ball. Before everyone knows it, he is 80 yards downfield and in the end zone, with everyone in shock. Soon, it becomes obvious that the quarterback can not throw that far and everyone is yelling Max to come back closer. He speeds back, catches the ball at a reasonable distance and again reaches the end zone before the defense can even get close. There is a brief moment of stunned silence before the crowd and team erupts into cheers. Max is carried off the field on his teammates shoulders while his dad, mom (Melanie Lynskey) and little sister Jamie (Isabelle Nélisse) are smiling proudly from the stands, although with a bit of confusion on their face. Max jogs towards the stands to hug them and realizes that his super speed has worn off. He insists he does not know what got into him
At school the next day, Max is something of a folk hero as his viral videos of his game are all over social media. This gives him a newfound confidence and he tells Will that he is going to ask out Chloe. As they are talking, she approaches him and says what he did last night was awesome. She ends up asking him out, which makes him feel giddy inside. As he and Marshall talk, they run into their frequent tormentor Hawk (Nicholas Hamilton) who says that just because Max is a local celebrity does not mean he is off the hook in Hawk’s eyes. He then says we’ll see how well Max’s speed works when running away and starts chasing Max, who can only run at normal speed. He hits his legs, hoping something will turn on inside him. He trips and falls, with Hawk mounting him and rearing his fist back. Max grows angry and is going to punch Hawk at the same time when he gets another tingling sensation and proceeds into a violent seizure.
We next find Max at the doctor’s office with his parents. His medical history is gone over. When he was young, he had a condition where getting angry would send him into a seizure. A pill was developed for him that stopped the seizures, which he still takes to this day. After some testing, the doctor says that his body has formed some type of immunity to the pill and this might be what is causing these episodes. The doctor tells them that he will contact the company behind the medicine to see if help find a solution.
There is a montage of Max’s few weeks, showcasing Max’s different “episodes”. While driving with Marshall away from school, he is happy as they sing along to their favorite song when his hands become so powerful that he accidentally tears the steering wheel off from the car. He gets angry at Jamie for changing the channel while he is watching TV and has another seizure. On a date with Chloe at the movies, they are both crying as they watch a tear-jerker together when all of a sudden he turns ice cold and they discover he can freeze anything he touches.
At the end of the montage, Chloe tells Max that the last few weeks have been wild to say the least, which he agrees. As they get to know each other better, he reveals to her that he adopted. When she asks what he knows about his birth parents (because maybe these powers are related to genetics), he says his adoptive parents have never wanted to talk about them. They try to sleuth around the internet but are unable to find anything.
At football practice, Max is now in position of starting receiver but finds it stressful as he can not reproduce the speed that he had in the one game. After practice, Max is approached by a limo that invites him in. They say they are from The Fairbanks Company, the corporation who makes his seizure pill. At first he is hesitant, but soon sees that Weston Fairbanks (Rami Malek) – an eccentric pharmaceutical whiz kid who has grown into a billionaire celebrity over the years – is in the vehicle waiting for him. Star-struck, Max goes along for the ride.
In the limo, Fairbanks fluffs up Max’s ego. He says that after being contacted by Max’s physician, the company has studied Max’s condition and they have hypothesized that his body is experiencing drastic physiological episodes for only a couple of minutes each day (at a random time). Each episode differs depending on his mood when it kicks in. He then says that he believes that they believe to have developed a remedy drug to put his seizures (and other episodes) to rest. Before he drops Max off at his home, Fairbanks offers to take Max to see the local professional football team from his private skybox anytime he wants.
Because he likes some of things his body can do during these episodes, he debates taking the new drug. He debates it with Will and Chloe. Will enthuses about the episodes and says that Max could become a superhero if he learns how to control them correctly and Will can be his right hand man. Chloe, meanwhile, says that she likes Max as the person he is and doesn’t care about the episodes. He ends up siding with her and takes the remedy pill, (without telling his parents).
At the Fairbanks headquarters, Weston talks with his confidants. They enthuse about having successfully convincing Max to take the new pill and says they need to get agents on the family to monitor their activities. They enter a laboratory where Weston is strapped to a bed and injected with an excessive amount of a mysterious drug. When he stands up, his body starts convulsing before he regains control. He then discovers that he has gained powers like Max has but instead of having them in short intervals, he has mastered it for a longer period of time. His group of confidants start celebrating and they start lining up to be injected with the drug themselves.
Meanwhile, Max and Chloe start doing some more digging into his parents. With again no luck, they look into Fairbanks and finally have a breakthrough. They find a slew of articles and begin reading through them while the film moves into flashback mode:
At 3 years old, young Max is diagnosed with a life-threatening illness. His parents, Jack and Hannah, are shell-shocked by this news (their faces are obscured as Max does not know what they look like). The doctor tells them that there has been no known cure to the illness but that there is an experimental drug that is currently being tested that could be worth a shot. Since its success rate is unknown, it is offered to them free of charge and they figure that it is better than not taking the risk at all.
Miraculously, the treatment works and Max’s illness is cured. However, he starts experiencing severe seizures as a result of the treatment – oddly enough, they only occur when he gets angry. His parents ask the doctor what they should do. There is a pill that is known to remedy these types of seizures made by The Fairbanks Company. Its price is extremely marked up (even with health insurance) and there is no generic version on the market. Torn by their moral compass, the parents consider suing the company but hate to see the extreme distress the seizures bring upon Max so they decide to pay for the drug.
At a price of nearly $800 per pill, Jack and Hannah go broke paying for the treatment. They downscale and move into a smaller apartment and Dave works multiple jobs trying to stay afloat. Finally, they decide that they must do what its right and sue Fairbanks, as they don’t want others in the same situation as they are. However, due to the massive amount of expenditure that the company pours into the trial, Fairbanks is found not guilty and Jack and Hannah go bankrupt as a result. Guilty about their inability to raise Max in a stable environment, they decide it is best to put Max up for adoption so he can live his fullest life without pain. He is adopted by a wealthy couple, Marshall and Laura Sadler.
Max and Chloe put two and two together and realize that The Fairbanks Company must have made the original experimental drug – thus forcing Max’s parents into paying the high amount for the remedy medicine. Chloe then hypothesizes that Fairbanks used baby Max to experiment his new drug and see if it could produce superhuman abilities (and was willing to let Max die if not). Max responds by saying that he wanted Max to take the new drug because he wants the powers all to himself. He says they have to tell the authorities, but first there is someone else he needs to talk about this with.
He tells Marshall and Laura about his meeting with Fairbanks and the new remedy and they are angry for him not telling them. He then says that he knows about his birth parents. They say that they hid Jack and Hannah’s identity from him upon their request, as his birth parents were ashamed of their inability to raise him. They did not want that to be the way Max thinks about them. Max is angry at them for withholding the identity of his parents from him this entire time.
Max stops taking the new remedy pill in preparation of the big playoff game coming up, with the hope that his episode will kick in during the game so he can help his team. Meanwhile, Marshall and Laura decide to contact the authorities about Fairbanks’s activities and hopefully get him arrested. However, Fairbanks had someone spying on Max’s home and thus they become aware about the plan of his parents. He orders Marshall and Laura to be kidnapped.
At the game, Max grows anxious about his powers and upon not finding his parents in the stands. He begins to worry that him lashing out at them stopped them from coming to the game. The team once again finds themselves in a position where they need a touchdown on their final drive – this time with the entire season on the line. On fourth down, Max is unable to get much separation but the quarterback throws it his way anyways. However, he drops the pass and lets his team and the crowd down. Knowing that his family have been to every game his entire career, he grows worried that he really upset them and rushes home to make things right.
When he arrives home, Jamie tells him that they have not been home all night. They use their computer to track their parent’s iPhones and discover their location to be at the Fairbanks headquarters. Max panics and calls Will and tells him to come over and watch over Jamie as he has business to deal with. Max heads to the headquarters of The Fairbanks Company.
There, he finds his parents have been taken hostage. Max pleads with Fairbanks to let them go but he says that Max should have just taken the new drug and been happy. Max, frustrated that powers won’t activate, acts as if he is happy and thus fakes his sense of super strength and challenges Fairbanks to a fight. Fairbanks begins to manipulate his emotional state to his advantage in his fight with Max and defeats him rather easily. He beats Max within an inch of his life but then pulls back and tells his minions that he is the good guy in this situation and that is they who need to finish off Max and his parents.
Fairbanks sits at his throne-like chair overlooking the facility and gleefully laughs. Max, barely breathing, looks at his parents and has a tear roll down his face while his body starts to tingle. With a big smile on his face, Fairbanks exclaims that he will now be known as THE ALCHEMIST. As he says this, he starts to shake and has a violent seizure. His minions panic and surround him, trying to figure out how to stop it. Meanwhile, Max wills himself to his feet and unties his parents. He then makes his way to the Fairbanks employees and begins to fight them one-by-one, freezing them as he goes along.
When he gets to Fairbanks, Weston starts to recover from his seizure and pleads for mercy. He says that the skybox offer is still on the table. Max inches his hand closer to Weston’s body and says he is doing this for Jack and Hannah. He turns Fairbanks over and freezes his wrists together, forming makeshift handcuffs. On cue, authorities from the FBI and FDA rush in and actually arrest Fairbanks and his confidants – as Chloe, who was not being spied on by Fairbanks, contacted them earlier in the day.
Max hugs and kisses Chloe before going over to Marshall and Laura and giving them long warm hugs. He says that he is sorry for hurting their feelings and that he is eternally grateful for them choosing to raise them. They whisper that they are willing to help him in his quest to locate his birth parents going forward. As Fairbanks is being escorted away, he says that they have not heard the last of the Alchemist before giving off another maniacal laugh which sends him into another seizure.
Clips that accompany the credits reveal that Max has decided to not take the remedy pills and tests out more of his powers. He and Will set up a system to keep track of incidents on the school’s campus so Max can come to the rescue. Chloe writes “MAXIMUM MAX” at the top of the white board and both give approving nods. They are interrupted by Laura, who reminds Max that his anger management appointment is in an hour.
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