8.02.2007

The Bourne Again Post

Summer means sequels, and sequels work best with action thrillers and big franchises. Unfortunately the Bourne series has never been much of either to me, and the third attempt to capture the adequate thrills found in the first movie falls as flat as the first sequel.

I don’t remember much about the first two movies, besides that they were adequate action flicks with dreadful camera work. Coming out of the third I am feeling the exact same feeling. Ask me anything about the plot, the reveals and the character connections and I’d barley be able to give you an answer, but mention any scene or segment and I’ll write you a list of shots that made my head ache and my stomach lurch. Seriously this movie is ridiculous in the camera department. Two characters can’t have a face to face chat without the ‘gritty’ director having his cameraman shake wildly and go nuts with his focus, and many fight scenes lost their impact due to sheer irritation with the filming. “Ok, so in this scene Mr. Damon I want you to act very solemn because you’ve been shot and are depressed. Ok Camera 2, I want you to dance around him about three inches from his face and spin the focus on your lens around like a top. What? You can’t see what’s going on? Perfect! and… ACTION”

We follow Jason Bourne as he is still on the run and using cool dodging tactics to avoid evil government agents. What exactly is it that Mr. Bourne is running from/towards? I don’t know ask is many reoccurring flashbacks which spring up throughout the film. The black and white blurs are supposed to tie everything together and keep the audience guessing as he slowly pieces together his back-story. Sadly they are not very helpful and even at the film's desperately anticlimactic finale we are left with many unanswered questions. This would bother me more if I had any desire to find out the answers. We’ve been strung along through three films now, each time finding out that there is a new bad guy/evil government agent who pulls the strings. This is the case with this third entry. I believe (don’t quote me) that this is supposed to be the trilogy ender for Jason’s story. If that’s the case then I am very surprised with the ending, which does eliminate all immediate threats to Bourne that spring up in this film, but doesn’t do much to wrap the character up at all. In the movie's defense there are a few good close combat brawls and some big car crashes (if you can tell what’s going on enough to appreciate them).

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