A nuclear warhead has been stolen and Captain Jim Faith (Powers Boothe) knows just who to recruit to track it down.  Former CIA agent MacGruber (Will Forte) agrees to come out of retirement, so he can save the world from Dieter Von Cunth (Val Kilmer), the man who blew up MacGruber’s fiancée (Maya Rudolph) on the day of their wedding.

MacGruber re-assembles his old team.  Sure, Vicki St. Elmo (Kristen Wiig) no longer wants to be a part of the adventure and MacGruber refuses work with Lt. Dixon Piper (Ryan Phillippe) but he still brings together a collection of men who look like they eat carburetors for breakfast.  And then he accidentally blows them up.  MacGruber’s assembling a new team!  While mentoring Dixon and falling in love with Vicki, MacGruber seeks his revenge on Cunth.  He also makes peace with his past by having sex with his fiancée’s ghost on her tombstone.

Based on the SNL skit that was itself based on a one-joke premise, MacGruber is a surprisingly entertaining action comedy, mixing frequently crude humor with heartfelt pathos.  MacGruber works because, even while it makes fun of action movies, it still respects the rules of the genre.  The jokes and the bullets fly with equal power.  MacGruber is an idiot but he’s also the only man who can save Washington from Cunth’s plot and Will Forte does an admirable job of delivering every bizarre line of dialogue with a fully committed straight face..  Val Kilmer plays Cunth as being a classic action villain, right down to his dismissive attitude and his long-winded speeches.  Kristen Wiig is both sexy and adorably awkward as the love interest.  And Ryan Phillippe does a surprisingly good job as the the one person who seems to understand how crazy MacGruber really is.  Every good comedy needs a good straight man and Ryan Phillippe proves himself to be more than up to the task.

MacGruber is full of quotable lines and scenes that are so out-there that you might need to rewind and confirm that you actually saw what you just did.  There have been a lot of bad Saturday Night Live movies.  MacGruber is one of the good ones.