Mitch Rapp | |
---|---|
First appearance | American Assassin |
Created by | Vince Flynn |
Portrayed by | Dylan O'Brien (film adaptation) |
In-universe information | |
Alias | Mitch Kruse, Mike Kruse, Irving |
Gender | Male |
Title | Special Assistant to the Director of the CIA on Counterterrorism |
Occupation | Counter Terrorism Operative |
Family | Steven Rapp (brother) |
Spouse | Anna Rielly (from Executive Power to Consent to Kill) |
Mitch Rapp is a fictional character in a series of novels that were written by Vince Flynn and in the film adaptation of American Assassin . Since Flynn's death in 2013, the series has been continued by Kyle Mills.
Rapp is a counter-terrorism operative, employed, first unofficially then officially, by the CIA. The primary focus of the character is thwarting foreign terrorist attacks on the United States and he is presented as an aggressive operative who is willing to take measures that are more extreme than might be considered commonly acceptable.
Rapp's high school sweetheart Maureen Eliot, who was attending Syracuse University with Rapp, was killed in the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. She had been one of thirty-five Syracuse students returning from a semester overseas. One year later he was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency by Irene Kennedy.
Over the course of the series Rapp terminates a large number of terrorists both on foreign and domestic soil. His main conflicts center on foreign terrorists.
Rapp attended Syracuse University, where he majored in international business and minored in French. He attended the college on a lacrosse scholarship [1] and was an All-American. Rapp was also offered a scholarship by the University of North Carolina, but turned that one down because his high school sweetheart Maureen was attending Syracuse with the hope of getting into broadcasting. Maureen, whom Rapp had known since he was sixteen years old, was killed in the December 21, 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. She had been one of thirty-five Syracuse students returning from a semester overseas.
Nearly a year after Maureen's death, Rapp was recruited into the CIA by Irene Kennedy. He began training the week after graduating from Syracuse. Only twenty-three years old at the time, Rapp did not go through the standard CIA training program at "The Farm", outside Williamsburg, Virginia. Instead, for a year straight he was shuttled from one location to the next, sometimes spending a week, sometimes a month. The bulk of the training was handled by Stan Hurley, a former CIA operative, who taught him "how to shoot, stab, blow things up, and even kill with his bare hands". In other words, he was schooled in firearms and marksmanship, hand-to-hand combat, and explosives. Endurance was stressed. There were long swims and even longer runs. Between all the heavy lifting, they worked on his foreign language skills. Since he had minored in French at Syracuse, within a month at the CIA he was fluent in the language. He was then taught Arabic and Persian and can passably speak Urdu and Pashto. He also speaks French, German and Italian. He is ambidextrous, but naturally left-handed.
Rapp then became an operative of the Orion Team, a highly secretive organization supported by the CIA but outside the Agency. It is funded by money that has been diverted out of congressionally funded programs. The job of the Orion Team in a nutshell is to take the war to the terrorists. It was formed in response to the Lockerbie disaster by the then CIA director of operations Thomas Stansfield. The unit operates in secret, independent of the U.S. national security apparatus and circumvents the leviathan of politics and gets around small impediments like the executive order banning assassinations. The team is headed by Rapp's recruiter, Irene Kennedy, whose official role is as director of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
Rapp has been the Orion Team's star operative almost from the day he started and has been honed into the most effective counterterrorism operative in America's arsenal. He's spent significant amounts of time in Europe, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia collecting intelligence and when the situation called for it, dealing with threats in a more final manner.
Officially, Rapp has nothing to do with the U.S. government; rather, he is referred to in the business as a private contractor. Rapp lives a life completely separate from the Agency. His cover is that of a successful entrepreneur. With the help of the CIA, he runs a small computer consulting business on the side that just happens to do a fair amount of international business, which gives him the cover to travel frequently. To keep things legitimate, Rapp often does indeed conduct business while abroad.
One of Rapp's aliases is Mitch Kruse. In the special ops community he is often known only by his call sign, "Iron Man" after the annual Ironman Triathlon in which he has participated on several occasions and has twice won. His only remaining family is his brother, Steven Rapp, a millionaire financial genius. Mitch and Steven grew up in McLean, Virginia.
Throughout the books, Rapp works with several special operations units including Navy SEALs and DEVGRU, Delta Force, Air Force Special Operations Command, the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, and the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne). He also has close ties with "SEAL Demolition and Salvage Corporation", a private military company specializing in underwater salvage such as getting rid of debris for ports and shipyards and training law enforcement divers, but whose employees also work from time to time as freelance operatives for the CIA. The company is owned and operated by Scott Coleman, former commanding officer of SEAL Team Six and friend of Rapp.
presented in order of storyline chronology
The New York Times bestseller, Consent to Kill, [2] was intended to be the first Mitch Rapp film in a proposed series of films by CBS Films. [3] Consent to Kill was scheduled to be produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Nick Wechsler; the screenplay was written by Jonathan Lemkin. The studio's last few films had performed poorly, causing them to delay the production of this film. Antoine Fuqua was originally attached to direct, [4] with several names being rumored to play Rapp, including Gerard Butler, Colin Farrell and Matthew Fox, [5] but the studio announced some major changes in June 2011. [6] One of these changes was that although the first film in the series was initially going to be based on an earlier novel, it would now be based it on a later instalment, American Assassin, which explains how Rapp became a CIA officer. Another change was that the leading man would, consequently, be younger, to reflect Rapp at a younger age and still at the beginning of his covert career. On 19 January 2016 CBS Films announced that American Assassin would be directed by Michael Cuesta and written by Stephen Schiff. Production needed to start by April 30, 2016, or the rights to the film would revert to the Vince Flynn Estate. On May 10, 2016, Deadline announced that 24-year-old actor Dylan O'Brien was in talks to play Rapp, with the "idea that O’Brien’s Mitch Rapp is college aged, and the hope is the actor grows as the series progresses." [7]
The movie filmed between the months of September and December 2016, [8] with shooting taking place in London, Rome, [9] [10] Valletta, [11] Phuket, [12] [13] and Birmingham. [14] The action film follows the rise of Rapp (O’Brien), a CIA black ops recruit under the instruction of Cold War veteran Stan Hurley (Michael Keaton). The pair is then enlisted by CIA Deputy Director Irene Kennedy (Sanaa Lathan) to investigate a wave of apparently random attacks on both military and civilian targets. Together, the three discover a pattern in the violence leading them to a joint mission with a lethal Iranian agent (Shiva Negar) to stop a mysterious operative (Taylor Kitsch) intent on starting a World War in the Middle East. [15]
John T. Clark is a fictional character created by Tom Clancy. He has been featured in many of his Ryanverse novels. Although he first appeared in The Cardinal of the Kremlin (1988), his origin story was detailed in Without Remorse (1993).
Irene is a name derived from εἰρήνη (eirēnē), the Greek for "peace".
In the Line of Fire is a 1993 American political action thriller film directed by Wolfgang Petersen and starring Clint Eastwood, John Malkovich and Rene Russo. Written by Jeff Maguire, the film is about a disillusioned and obsessed former CIA agent who attempts to assassinate the President of the United States and the Secret Service agent who tracks him. Eastwood's character is the sole active-duty Secret Service agent who is still remaining from the detail that had guarded John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, at the time of his assassination in 1963. The film also stars Dylan McDermott, Gary Cole, John Mahoney, and Fred Dalton Thompson.
Jason Bourne is the title character and the protagonist in a series of novels and subsequent film adaptations. The character was created by novelist Robert Ludlum. He first appeared in the novel The Bourne Identity (1980), which was adapted for television in 1988. The novel was adapted into a feature film of the same name in 2002 and starred Matt Damon in the lead role.
Vincent Joseph Flynn was an American author of political thriller novels featuring the fictional assassin Mitch Rapp. He was a story consultant for the fifth season of the television series 24. He died of prostate cancer on June 19, 2013.
Kyle Mills is an American writer of thriller novels including Rising Phoenix, Fade, and The Second Horseman. Several of his books include a character Mark Beamon, an FBI special agent. He also wrote The Ares Decision (2011), The Utopia Experiment (2013), and The Patriot Attack (2015), the eighth, tenth, and twelfth installments of the Covert-One series, originally created by Robert Ludlum. He is the former writer of the Mitch Rapp series of novels, having written nine books in the series after original author Vince Flynn died in 2013. In February, 2023, Mills announced he would be leaving the Mitch Rapp series after his contribution to the series, Code Red (2023), was published. Author Don Bentley was announced as the new author for the series.
Consent to Kill is the seventh novel by Vince Flynn and the sixth in a series that features CIA counterterrorism agent Mitch Rapp. In this thriller, Flynn focuses on the war on terror exploring all its aspects, from the president of the United States, to the CIA, the foot soldiers and the potentially deadly terrorists.
Term Limits, published in 1997, is the first political thriller novel by Vince Flynn.
RFK Must Die: The Assassination of Bobby Kennedy is a 2007 investigative documentary by Irish writer and filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan. The film expands on O'Sullivan's earlier reports for BBC Newsnight and The Guardian and explores conspiracy theories related to the assassination of United States Senator Robert F. Kennedy on 5 June 1968. The title comes from a page of "free writing" found in assassin Sirhan Sirhan's notebook after the shooting upon which Sirhan had written "R.F.K. must die - RFK must be killed Robert F. Kennedy must be assassinated... before June 5 '68."
The Third Option is Vince Flynn's third novel, and the second to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent who works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counterterrorism unit called the "Orion Team". The first book in the Mitch Rapp series, American Assassin, was written later, but is a prologue to Kill Shot, the second in this series. The title refers to the option in international relations when diplomacy fails and military intervention is inappropriate: black ops.
Separation of Power is Vince Flynn's fourth novel, and the third to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent who works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counterterrorism unit called the "Orion Team".
Executive Power is Vince Flynn's fifth novel, and the fourth to feature Mitch Rapp, an American agent that works for the CIA as an operative for a covert counter terrorism unit called the "Orion Team".
Memorial Day is Vince Flynn's sixth novel, and the fifth to feature Mitch Rapp, an American CIA agent that works for the counter-terrorism unit "Orion Team".
The Jerusalem File is a 1972 film directed by John Flynn. It stars Bruce Davison, Nicol Williamson, Daria Halprin, and Donald Pleasence. The film only ever made it onto VHS in various dubbed or subtitled languages. It can be found on YouTube in English with Finnish subtitles.
Dylan Rhodes O'Brien is an American actor. His first major role was as Stiles Stilinski in the MTV supernatural series Teen Wolf (2011–2017). He achieved further prominence for his lead role in the science fiction Maze Runner trilogy (2014–2018), which led to more film appearances.
Transfer of Power is Vince Flynn's fourth published book in 1999 and is third book featuring Mitch Rapp, the CIA's super agent. The book was released on July 1, 1999 by Pocket Books. It reached number 13 in the New York Times paperback bestsellers chart.
Pursuit of Honor is a novel by Vince Flynn and the tenth novel in the Mitch Rapp series. It was published on December 1, 2009.
American Assassin is a 2017 American action thriller film directed by Michael Cuesta and starring Dylan O'Brien, Michael Keaton, Sanaa Lathan, Shiva Negar, and Taylor Kitsch. It was written by Stephen Schiff, Michael Finch, Edward Zwick, and Marshall Herskovitz. Nominally based on Vince Flynn's 2010 novel of the same name, the story is centered on young CIA black ops recruit Mitch Rapp, who helps a Cold War veteran try to stop the detonation of a rogue nuclear weapon.
The Survivor is the fourteenth novel in the Mitch Rapp series. It was published on October 6, 2015. It is the first novel in the series to be written by Kyle Mills, after the death of previous series author, Vince Flynn.
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