I sat through Paul Greengrass's jerky, hyperkinetic, ADDed, no-shot-longer-than-five-seconds direction of the Bourne Ultimatum last night. His "style" almost ruined the film for me once again. Gee, wouldn't it be nice to actually see what's going on in a scene once in a while? As in the last headache-inducing Bourne movie, the fight scenes are shot so poorly that it's hard to see what's really happening. I'm aware that the film is getting good reviews but this guy is a disaster as a director, IMO.

Dave Mitsky

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This style worked very well in Gladiator as a means of communicating both the confusion of combat and the speed at which the combatants had to react. In this case, the film works really well with those who have what one might call a better trained eye. Those who do not watch much sports or films or television that uses quick cuts will probably find the cuts too fast. However, these people are probably outside of the target audience of the film.

The director was able to keep the pace of the movie up throughout the film, even with a few mandatory pauses, which was a pretty amazing feat.

But we should be talking about the poor physics! How much glass can one man crash through?

Well, like any action hero pain and injury simply do not apply to Bourne.

I consider my eye to be fairly well-trained. I watch a fair share of sports, both live and televised, and am only too familiar with the MTV video era school of "filmmaking". Almost all the "static" shots in the film featured cut-off heads or poor camera angles. Has Greengrass ever heard of a tripod or properly framing a shot I wonder?

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Re The Boured UltimatumI.e., the ADD/MTV/What the heck is "character development"?/Is it cool? folks.Yeah it was like watching a two hour beer/sneakers/cell phone commercial. If that's your idea of quality movie making you can have it.If one has no interest in the character who's crashing through yet another glass barrier, then who cares?

Reobviously Newspeak for an eye (and what's left of the brain) that's been programmed by commercial TV.

Someone wake me up when the next interesting Hollywood movie comes along.

Move over, Rip.

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Wife and I watched the Bourne Supremacy last night, since she had liked the first movie. Did not carry over.

I started by betting her how long it would take for his girl friend to get killed. Pretty sure I won.

Then we wondered if passports reproduce like mushrooms when left in dark places.

We wondered why, if the guy is truly an ubermensch killing machine, he let the other killing machine get close enough to him to have a fight and nearly kill him.

We wondered why, AFTER he realized there was a worldwide APB out for him with his picture in every cop's hand, he at least didn't put on a hat, or dark glasses, or something.

We agreed that Moscow must be the ugliest city in the world. Berlin is in close competition for second place.

We agreed that if CIA agents are even remotely like the snarky, status-obsessed, all-speed-but-no-velocity geeks in the film we are actually in serious trouble. John LeCarre' beats Ludlum hands-down at the sleazy spy game.

If I want to watch a bunch of people doing tense things while staring at television screens Apollo 13 is much better.

No car chase should last two hours.

Bourne was actually bitten by a radioactive spider.

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I read two of the books. Hated them. I watched two of the movies. Hated them. There's no substance. No story. No logic.

And they're shot in a twitchy, spastic, epilepsy-inducing way. You want a good thriller? Watch The Third Man.

Look at this modern trailer for The Third Man made for TCM. Tell me that isn't better.

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I don't have to look to tell you it's better.

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Oh, no doubt. I really just wanted an excuse to post that. It's cool.

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I liked the first Bourne movie, the one that was directed by Doug Liman and not Paul Greengrass, too.

I wondered about Bourne's never-ending series of passports as well.

Well, we can't have the star being obscured in any way by taking the simplest steps to make his character less noticeable to his pursuers, can we?

Agreed and perhaps he was bitten by a spider. Hmm, come to think of it Bourne's real last name was Webb.

Dave Mitsky

__________________
Chance favors the prepared mind.
De gustibus non est disputandum.
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

What I've never understood was the underlying premise behind the first movie.

SPOILER ALERT for Bourne Identity!

After all, if not for the hidden flash device in his thigh, Jason Bourne might still be a Mediterranean fisher to this day. That was his only clue, from which he finds the gun and the passports and the money, etc.

Okay, so agent Bourne has a safety deposit box with his secret stash. No problem. He's about to go on a mission, but FIRST, he wants to make extra certain that he doesn't accidentally get shot in the back, fall into the ocean, and develop amnesia. So he implants the device in his thigh so that in case he gets shot in the back, falls in the ocean, and develops amnesia, he can still find his spending money.

First problem: Who in the world comes up with a contingency plan in case he gets amnesia? What was his contingency plan in case he was framed for a murder he didn't commit by his unknown evil twin brother? How about if aliens land on the White House lawn? What about if an asteroid the size of Texas is heading for Earth, what then?

Second problem: If you are leaving yourself a clue to your true purpose in life in case you get shot in the back, fall into the ocean, and develop amnesia, why can't you just include in the safe deposit box an envelope labeled, "In case of Amnesia, read this first!" Inside the envelope is a note written to yourself: "Your name is Jason Bourne, which is a code name, you are a trained killer for the CIA. Your boss's name is X and his address is di dah di dah."

Is this gaping plot hole closed up in the books?

Er... no. Not at all.

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I figured it was for the job; those guys memorized a bunch of stuff and kept a bunch of their worlds around themselves under their control, but memory isn't perfect, and shtuff happens. If you forget or lose something crucial or find yourself deprived of important possessions by error or bad luck or someone else's malice, it helps to have a backup method of retrieving lost information and/or resources. I, for example, keep my account IDs and passwords and step-by-step directions for certain processes recorded even though I know the stuff, and have been known to keep a truck key on the outside of my truck (hanging from a hard-to-spot hole in the frame on the underside) in case of self-lockout even though I never lock myself out.

But, for them, the backup would have to be something they still have even if they've lost everything else and unlikely to fall into someone else's possession even when everything else has. That essentially means it has to be storable in the body, which then means that it has to be small in scale and scope. And the only way for something that limited to be that useful when you're that desperate is if it gives you access to a very generalized stash of stuff (which you can then use to get whatever more specific stuff you might need in the specific situation).

Another explanation would be that even before the moment we're shown when he changed his mind, there might have been two personalities struggling for dominance, and one of them planted the thing for when it would be able to get rid of the other one, but that goes against too much psychology.

Anyway, I found it a minor enough conceit to enable the story in any case, because the first one had such a great story... sorto like accepting human aliens who speak English because it lets you watch Star Trek. The problem was that the second and third movies haven't had any story to them; he has nothing good to live for or fight for anymore, only bad stuff to take revenge against, and a simple revenge movie is nothing compared to a movie about someone struggling to figure stuff out, start over, and make a new good life for himself. Even with a "happy ending", a revenge story still ends with the original problem not fixed and nothing made any better, so what's the whole point?