Wednesday, August 22

Bourne Ultimatum

I wanted to blog about this on Sunday but never got around to it...

Anyway, watched the last (?) of the Bourne flicks at the weekend, and I have to say it's a bloody good piece of entertainment: superb set-pieces handled with aplomb by Paul Greengrass, who prior to directing the previous Supremacy wasn't exactly known for making action flicks, but with these two under his belt, not to mention the very tense United 93 then I reckon he should take Michael Bay, Kurt Wimmer, Len Wiseman, et al under his tutelage and give them a crash-course in directing action sequences with an added touch of intelligence thrown in.

When I saw the first Bourne Identity knowing very little about it (except that I was a fan of Doug Liman's Go) I was pleasantly surprised at the American's out-Bond-ing Bond, and Matt Damon definitely gives a better performance of a more realistic Government agent (which is probably why Broccolli & Co went back to basics with Casino Royale).

By the time James presses that tinny button on his watch, Bourne would've whacked him unconcious with the nearest rolled-up newspaper.

But, Bourne needed the British touch which is why the series - under the helm of the English Greengrass - has progressed in leaps and bounds, and I'm pretty certain there will be fourth - though without Damon and Greengrass they may has well not bother.






3 comments:

Megan said...

My hubby's first reaction: "Somebody get that asshole a steadicam."

My first reaction: "Car chases are much more amusing with little European cars."

Followed by general approval.

Chris said...

Ah, the ShakyCam: occasionally, I think it works - and I've seen worse examples (the opening to 28 Weeks Later is one, which was almost nausous to watch...)

Best cinematography in a long time has to be Children of Men. Awesome camera-work.

Megan said...

Yes! We loved that movie. At times the shots were so impressive that we kind of got kicked out of the story, because we were thinking "Wow, that's a really gorgeous shot"...but if that's the worst thing you can say about a movie, that's pretty good.

I agree about ShakyCam (and its cousin SpookyCam). They're overused (but despite that, I do tend to find them effective the 5 or 10 percent of the time they're used well). One of my longstanding pet peeves about Battlestar Galactica is the use of ShakyCam tricks for space battles. C'mon, folks, we don't really think there's a documentary maker floating around dodging Vipers.