Regal Cinemas puts back into the system by offering free admission to any of their Houston theaters today.

That encompasses IMAX, RPX and regular screenings at area theaters: which includes the Edwards Marq*e (7620 Katy Freeway, Silber @ I-10); Regal Grand Parkway 22 (7301 Grand Parkway, Richmond, TX); Edwards West Oaks Mall Stadium (700 West Oaks Mall); and the Edwards Greenway Grand Palace Stadium 24 (3839 Wesleyan at Richmond).

Regal also throws in a free small popcorn and soda to the deal. Please take advantage of this unique deal, if only to see films you would never think of paying to see.

Not everybody likes the same film, and that’s great. Imagine what a boring world it would be if everybody liked the same film. We would be living in a Star Wars sanitarium.

Needless to say, Regal is a huge conglomeration and this is their way of saying that they welcome movie mavens as well as film neophytes to share in the common bond of sitting in the dark and being entertained. Houston will recover from recent flooding, and Regal wants to be a part of this effort.

On another note, American Assassin may well be the start of a new franchise as well as an overwhelmingly tough film that contains some of the best action sequences for a film of its genre.

The character of Mitch Rapp is known to readers of contemporary pulp fiction based on a series of novels written by Vince Flynn. In the novels, Rapp infiltrates terrorists’ organizations, with the intent on revenge, after his girlfriend is killed.

Rapp accomplishes what the CIA cannot, yet they track his moves and induct him into their hidden assassination program.

What makes American Assassin stand up above other genre specific movies like the Bourne series or Tom Clancy adaptations or whatever the spy du jour of the week demands is the action sequences that bookend this film.

In the beginning, we witness an unmentionable loss of life of civilians on the beach. The last act depicts literally the best realized nuclear denotation ever in a film. That includes everything from the cult 1950s drama Kiss Me Deadly to the more recent early 1990s fodder like Hunt For Red October.

American Assassin establishes Rapp (Dylan O’Brien) as a force to be dealt with operating within the cold dark shadows of intelligence agencies that control the conceptual perception of status quo. Michael Keaton co-stars and gets tortured medieval style in another pronounced sequence.