the bourne supremacy
scratched another movie off the summer must-see list last night. The Bourne Supremacy is, in fact, good summer fare; not quite meaningless but not quite meaningful and filled with car crashes, explosions and fisticuffs. (Not to mention spies. What's not to love?) The breakdown: Matt Damon returns as Jason Bourne, the assassin whose amnesia made him vulnerable and loveable (collective awww), who is sucked back into international espianoge when he's framed for a murder in Berlin and his beloved gypsy girlfriend, played by the refreshingly normal looking German actress Franke Potente, gets murdered before his eyes. Let the games begin.
THE GOOD:
1. Eye candy, she says shamelessly. Matt Damon is... dear god. Okay, I will admit when the hoopla over Good Will Hunting was in full swing I had thought that Affleck would be the break-out of the two, and for awhile didn't it sure seem like that? Though someone got a big head and got carried away with his publicity, while it seems someone else buffed up and found a magic studly potion... Hmm. So I was wrong. Damon certainly impresses, both physically and acting-wise as the stoic-and-yet-not-so-stoic spy. Rah rah for him. And for all of us ladies in the audience.
2. Hard-core supporting cast members. I see Joan Allen and Brian Cox going at it, head to head, neither giving an inch, and I am pleased. Thrilled. This, my friends, is what the cinema is about: sneaky people in power plays, spying and making the tough decisions, pissing people off and laying jobs on the line. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Both of these consummate actors deliver the goods and create a nice balance with Bourne's alternating brooding sessions and frenzied chases.
And the piece de resistance, Karl Urban as the Soviet secret police officer/paid assassin. (Can you believe I couldn't place him? Was royally pissed off at myself all throughout the movie almost to the point of distraction that I had seen him somewhere and couldn't put a name to the face. IMDb-ed him as soon as I got home and felt really stupid: He's Eomer!! Duh. Only one of my fav. LOTR characters. Though without the blond hair, you gotta admit, he's a bit hard to recognize...) Anyway, very sexy and dangerous and villainous. Lovely.
3. Spies! I have a weakness for them. Doesn't matter if the script has holes you can drive trucks through. Gotta love 'em, especially when they're as sneaky as this bunch (see #2).
4. Music for running. Great score- dramatic and insistent strings for action sequences. V. nice, considering its an action film.
5. A really cool last line. Yep. *snickers* Don't you miss those?
THE BAD & THE UGLY:
1. Come back when you're relevant. Julia Stiles isn't as forgettable as she was in the first Bourne film, but her presence still seems really pointless (with the exception of the scene when Bourne gets to reveal he's been watching them all the while...)- does Nikki have some kind of central role in the books or something? The other Treadstone guy? What the heck was the point of that? Zip. Nada. Similarly, there were a few minor characters who had enough of a part to warrant some more development and since they never received any, could just as soon been cut from the film altogether. Now I understand a Russian mastermind was needed, really, but who was he? I don't know. Oil company something. Not nearly enough info on him to let me be impressed with his evilness.
2. Angst-factor is high. Jason Bourne is a tortured soul. I can tell because he has blurry nightmares, broods while driving a lot, runs without purpose, went a little overboard with the eyeshadow, wears all black, spends a great deal of time communing with spirits in hotel bathrooms, and fingers a photograph with extreme care. Bite me. I don't care about his soul all that much, or his reconciliation with his past. Boo hoo hoo. Just let him shoot someone and feel better.
3. Not for the epileptic prone. Hand-held camera work is indeed in vogue. La-di-frellin-da. This movie took it to extremes, especially in the fight sequences and car chases where you couldn't tell who was who (dammit, you're wearing black too?!) or up from down because of the jerky camera movements. The switches over to steadicam were blantly obvious and really jarring, because all of a sudden things were clear and in frame... life was a dream... and then it's back to the bumpy, desperate for focus camera and a major headache is foreseeable in my future.
4. I've seen this before... The same credits from the Bourne Identity. Yeah, they were cool and the Moby song wasn't that sick-making. But again? The SAME lines and the SAME song? Come on, guys, show a little imagination.
The camera work (or complete lack thereof) is my only real beef with the film. Yeah, there are irrelevancies and it is really easy to figure out what's really going on. But Brian Cox being malevolent and Matt Damon spying are truly lovely and worth my seven-fifty.
THE GOOD:
1. Eye candy, she says shamelessly. Matt Damon is... dear god. Okay, I will admit when the hoopla over Good Will Hunting was in full swing I had thought that Affleck would be the break-out of the two, and for awhile didn't it sure seem like that? Though someone got a big head and got carried away with his publicity, while it seems someone else buffed up and found a magic studly potion... Hmm. So I was wrong. Damon certainly impresses, both physically and acting-wise as the stoic-and-yet-not-so-stoic spy. Rah rah for him. And for all of us ladies in the audience.
2. Hard-core supporting cast members. I see Joan Allen and Brian Cox going at it, head to head, neither giving an inch, and I am pleased. Thrilled. This, my friends, is what the cinema is about: sneaky people in power plays, spying and making the tough decisions, pissing people off and laying jobs on the line. Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Both of these consummate actors deliver the goods and create a nice balance with Bourne's alternating brooding sessions and frenzied chases.
And the piece de resistance, Karl Urban as the Soviet secret police officer/paid assassin. (Can you believe I couldn't place him? Was royally pissed off at myself all throughout the movie almost to the point of distraction that I had seen him somewhere and couldn't put a name to the face. IMDb-ed him as soon as I got home and felt really stupid: He's Eomer!! Duh. Only one of my fav. LOTR characters. Though without the blond hair, you gotta admit, he's a bit hard to recognize...) Anyway, very sexy and dangerous and villainous. Lovely.
3. Spies! I have a weakness for them. Doesn't matter if the script has holes you can drive trucks through. Gotta love 'em, especially when they're as sneaky as this bunch (see #2).
4. Music for running. Great score- dramatic and insistent strings for action sequences. V. nice, considering its an action film.
5. A really cool last line. Yep. *snickers* Don't you miss those?
THE BAD & THE UGLY:
1. Come back when you're relevant. Julia Stiles isn't as forgettable as she was in the first Bourne film, but her presence still seems really pointless (with the exception of the scene when Bourne gets to reveal he's been watching them all the while...)- does Nikki have some kind of central role in the books or something? The other Treadstone guy? What the heck was the point of that? Zip. Nada. Similarly, there were a few minor characters who had enough of a part to warrant some more development and since they never received any, could just as soon been cut from the film altogether. Now I understand a Russian mastermind was needed, really, but who was he? I don't know. Oil company something. Not nearly enough info on him to let me be impressed with his evilness.
2. Angst-factor is high. Jason Bourne is a tortured soul. I can tell because he has blurry nightmares, broods while driving a lot, runs without purpose, went a little overboard with the eyeshadow, wears all black, spends a great deal of time communing with spirits in hotel bathrooms, and fingers a photograph with extreme care. Bite me. I don't care about his soul all that much, or his reconciliation with his past. Boo hoo hoo. Just let him shoot someone and feel better.
3. Not for the epileptic prone. Hand-held camera work is indeed in vogue. La-di-frellin-da. This movie took it to extremes, especially in the fight sequences and car chases where you couldn't tell who was who (dammit, you're wearing black too?!) or up from down because of the jerky camera movements. The switches over to steadicam were blantly obvious and really jarring, because all of a sudden things were clear and in frame... life was a dream... and then it's back to the bumpy, desperate for focus camera and a major headache is foreseeable in my future.
4. I've seen this before... The same credits from the Bourne Identity. Yeah, they were cool and the Moby song wasn't that sick-making. But again? The SAME lines and the SAME song? Come on, guys, show a little imagination.
The camera work (or complete lack thereof) is my only real beef with the film. Yeah, there are irrelevancies and it is really easy to figure out what's really going on. But Brian Cox being malevolent and Matt Damon spying are truly lovely and worth my seven-fifty.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home