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August 23rd, 2007
09:49 am - The Bourne Ultimatum
I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum last night with my son. He's taking antibiotics (just an infected finger) and he feels a bit grotty, and he actually slept though most of it. In contrast I liked it a great deal. I think opinion is very divided on the slippery docu-camera style used by Paul Greengrass. I like it. Abigail isn't so sure. Abigail found the fighting and violence dour and attributed this to Greengrass' desire not to make us think that violence is fun. In contrast I thought the violence was great fun.
There are two types of fighting in the Bourne films. Firstly when one of the special assassins, particularly Jason, fights ordinary goons: though massively outnumbered he engages like a kind of whirlwind at a speed and complexity which is difficult to follow. Compared to a ninja film you can believe one man can take on a small army and win. The second type is where two of the special assassins fight, like two specialists. There were a couple of excellent examples in The Bourne Supremacy, and this film follows on very much in style and feel. These fights are I assumed speeded up by technical means, and they are exciting like a football match, like Alan Shearer knocking a ball through just the trajectory to miss all the flailing arms and legs and hit the goal. Another good aspect of the fight scenes is that they take place in cramped domestic and familiar settings, not the usual warehouse.
Similarly the chases use almost comically underpowered vehicles in bad traffic, with a brio that had me woop so loud I woke my son up.
The personal dynamics of the first scenes reminded me of Die Hard 4, with the brutal warrior protecting the weedy nerd (in this case a Guardian journalist - yay - with cameo role for uber-nerd Rusbridger). The scenes where Bourne steers nerd past the CIA killers in Waterloo Station was superb: another Shearer moment of precision in four dimensions ('duck now, turn left').
Next we go to an extended dynamic where Jason and The Women out-think The Man. Some people object to women being portrayed as clever and moral. I have no such objections. Also I love Joan Allen - even looking half starved. Give her a croissant.
Sometimes the precision was lost though. Sometimes Bourne lost it to the extent that he ended up with no better plan that running away at top speed, hoping the bullets would give him no more than a flesh wound. I don't want my hero to win only through a series of improbably strokes of good luck. I want him to survive because he's unnaturally brilliant.
Sadly, the resolution whereby powerful men's careers are destroyed because of public and official outcry that they have authorised the murder and torture of innocent people, 'even US citizens!' strains credulity even more than our hero leaping out of a car wreck and punching someone on the nose.
But - yeah - good fun.
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Comments:
That's *exactly* what I like about the Bourne movies, but I'd never quite put my finger on it.
I think I'll see if it is on at the weekend... *wanders off to movie tickets website*
The new film is very tightly blended to the previous one by the same director, to the extent of some scenes from the old film re-appearing with a new meaning.
I'm particularly a fan of the scenes where Bourne fights off assassins who are armed with knives or other wicked-looking solid implements by using soft objects grabbed from the immediate environment. In one of the previous movies it was a rolled-up magazine, in the Supremacy its a towel. A towel!
Yes, I'd forgotten that, the towel was brilliant.
BTW - have you read any Cormac McCarthy - your desert photos have reminded me of Blood Meridian
I really should read more of McCarthy. I was put off by an odd sequence of events. I read All The Pretty Horses, which I thought one of the most poignantly sad stories I'd ever read. Then I read Annie Proulx's Shipping News, which I found pretentious in the extreme. THEN I read Brian Myers' A Reader's Manifesto in The Atlantic and was seriously disconcerted by his lumping Proulx and McCarthy together. I think I'll try Blood Meridian, because it's reputed to be one of his best works, and appears to involve several subjects of interest to me. I'm rather morbidly fascinated by the subject of human brutality, particularly as it has manifested in the interactions between American Indians and those of European descent.
I think you'll find it a very - I don't know what to say - not an enjoyable read - but it is a masterpiece I think and deals with precisely that subject, to devastating effect
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/23696693/4754379) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) sugoll |
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| Date: | August 23rd, 2007 06:00 pm (UTC) |
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A towel is entirely plausible, too - I once spent a couple of hours in a workshop entitled "Self-Defence With a Handkerchief", and it's amazing what can be done.
I barely remember seeing the last Bourne film, so I hadn't realised they were so closely connected. Coo.
Brilliant. I also thought of Firefly when the Captain is fighting the Assassin with that weeny little knife, or whatever it was.
I loved it too. I thought of you during one of the fight scenes - the one in the bathroom, I think!
Gosh, what a reason to be thought of :-) I'll probably go and see it again when the lad feels better, seeing as he missed most of it.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/88422007/904887) | | From: | tehomet |
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| Date: | September 4th, 2007 07:08 pm (UTC) |
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It amused me that the communication weapon of choice at the end was a fax machine in a locked room. Seemed a bit old school. But then the Bourne movies are basically cold war movies, so it kinda made sense.
I liked your points on the attractions (if that's the right word) of the staging of the violence. But don't you think the plot of Bourne 3 was basically a retread of Bourne 2?
Like the series 24, it vaguely worries me their plots are entirely accepting of US military and government officials using torture as a tool of the trade. I mean, yeah they do, but should the American public be so sanguine about it? It's like it doesn't even have any shock value any more.
/random :)
It was very close to Bourne 2 wasn't it? But an enjoyable escapade anyway.
I was also surprised that the CIA control the security cameras in Waterloo Station :-0
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/43220742/9826958) | | From: | pligget |
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| Date: | September 7th, 2007 11:41 am (UTC) |
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I agree that the fighting between Treadstones was particularly gruesome and effective. I saw Ultimatum as part of a Bourne-athon with my post-A-level son and his friends, on the same evening as seeing Bournes 1 and 2 on DVD. It was a fab way to see it - and I particularly liked how the final scene of B2 was blended into B3 - something I might have missed if I hadn't just seen it again.
I saw Bourne 2 on - dunno - ITV 3 or something - the night before I went to the cinema. And yes, the two are really part of a continuum, partly reprising or revisiting some of the same material, partly expanding on it. |
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