I took in THUNDERBOLTS* at a matinee yesterday... Marvel movies have gotten more like Grand Opera lately, but this was a nice change of pace...fast-moving, funny, and self-spoofing--like good superhero movies should be. Bond fans should note that Olga Kurylenko gets a high billing, but you see her for LITERALLY about five seconds. If she's your only reason for going, stay home.
I last watched this in 2021 and there's a review online here somewhere. I seem to watch A Few Good Men every few years without my enjoyment lessening. Tom Cruise must have been in his early thirties, but still manages to look as if he’s just left high school, which puts him at a disadvantage when confronting Jack Nicholson’s weathered Marine’s colonel over the court room witness box. A very good script demands our attention and the actors deliver all the expected highs and lows. It’s difficult to fault. Exceedingly well-made and like all great trial dramas the heady sphere of the courts of law provide all the excitement, even if it is all done sitting down. I’d easily rate this as one of Cruise’s best all-round performances and one of his best all-round movies, high school good-looks or not.
I think we can safely say the MI movie series is James Bond's main competitor in the spy action-adventure genere. So how is it? It's a great movie in its genere. Some of the scenes are spectacular! Bond26 needs to be at least as good as this. But there are problems. The first act of the film is mostly plot dumping and mythlogizing Tom Cr ... I mean Ethan Hunt. it would be better if they got to the Barents Sea (actually Svalbard) much quicker. I find some of the movie too pompous and I found some religious references and practically making Cruises character as the whole world's Messiah a bit too much. So, fantastic action movie, but the series and tom Cruise needs to lighten up and not take themselves so seriously.
The bad: the first act is really clunky with a lot of exposition to do two things: remind viewers what happened in DEAD RECKONING and also remind viewers what happened in the first six movies. The pacing is off and the narrative isn't very smooth, jerking around here and there. I suspect that a lot was edited here to help try and bring the already long runtime down.
That's really about it for 'bad', though.
The good: once you're past that first act and the film settles into the true narrative of the story, the film takes off. The narrative is smooth and the set pieces line up nicely. I'd like to particularly note the big submarine sequence. That is set up as something that's going to happen in the first act. It take about an hour to get there in the story but it's all a matter of getting through escalating events to set it up. Once it hits, it's a masterpiece of tension and one of the best overall sequences of the entire franchise. It's just escalating tension for probably 30 minutes. The good news is that that sequence is topped by the incredible biplane sequence featured in the movie trailers. Thankfully, the trailers have only teased what actually happens in that sequence...it's a real jaw dropper.
My wife really, really liked this and cited it as her favorite of the franchise. I would not go that far (I think ROGUE NATION and FALLOUT are better) but it's really, really good.
Suggestions: You're obviously going to want to rewatch DEAD RECKONING before seeing this. I'd also consider rewatching DEAD RECKONING M:I 3. The third film is surprisingly important to the narrative in this film. It's not a crisis if you don't rewatch it but you'll reap some benefits if you do (or if you remember it well).
In my opinion the best part of the submarine sequence is when Hunt is inside the sub. It's sensational! The rest of the submarine sequence will never show up on "Tom Cruise doing his own stunts" DVD special features. It just Cruise in diving gear reacting to CGI.
Made some edits to my post for clarity. I wrote that on my phone and it looks like it came out as a jumble of words in places. Sorry.
While yes, a lot of the 'exterior' shots of the submarine sequence are CGI and model based, they're fantastic. Him exiting the Ohio and seeing that Russian sub following closely is amazing.
I loved what followed. Somewhat spoilery but him getting caught up in the Ohio's wake and then getting dragged along the Russian sub's hull was awesome.
Calvin Dyson brings up a good point in his review of this movie. People in MI tell the Tom Cruise character how wonderful he is and he's the only one who can save al humankind. In James Bond movies it's never said even though he has saved the world several times. At least it's never said to his face. Perhaps it's a British vs American thing, and personally I like the British way better. Tom Cruise being the producer of this movie and still allowing (or maybe even pushing for?) his character being portrayed as and talked about as some kind of Messiah makes me wonder about Cruise's psyche, especially since the line between the character and the actor sometimes blurs. . To be clear, in spite of my misgivings about final Reckoning I still think it's an amazing action movie.
A great performance from Laurence Olivier as the title character of Shakespeare’s history play, can’t save Richard III from being just a trifle dull. This often happens when the Bard casts his quill over the history of Merrie England; so intent to present an accurate misreading of true events is Our Will that he has a tendency to overindulge himself and buries most of the first two or three acts in a waffle of historical scene setting and character introduction before the excitement kicks in for the last third or so. Olivier, as adaptor, director and actor does his best to cut out the waffle and get on with things, but it is still a humdrum affair, enlivened by Olivier, John Gielgud and Sir Cedric Hardwicke delivering the goods and Ralph Richardson looking uncomfortable as the Duke of Buckingham, one of Richard’s closest supporters. Stanley Baker crops up late on as Henry VII. All these acting-knights and you do think we should have a more engrossing product to view.
What we do have dawdles and deadens and if it wasn’t for Olivier, I would have turned off. Many rank his Richard as the finest of his Shakespearian turns and you can see why. Sly and sneaky, snakelike and spindled, sensuous and snivelling, his Richard III is a villain of some substance and much contradiction. How Olivier matches his character’s movements to his speeches and circumstances is the key to his success. Early on he strides confidently around an empty cathedral, warning the audience of his intention to wear the crown of England. The soliloquies are spoken directly to camera, making this filmic version of the Bard much more intimate and theatre-like than others. Having proposed to Claire Bloom’s Lady Anne, he stoically takes her rejection, gently touching the cheek she spat upon. Later, sure of his victory at Bosworth, he is efficient, lenient and confident, and his loping stride becomes stronger, the back not so arched. It is only when he conspires and deals in death and villainy that he bends and stoops and hobbles. While many critics frequently lambast the play for its one-sided portrait of Richard III, it is noticeable how clear Shakespeare makes it that the unfortunate king did once have the support of the people, church and gentry, that it was betrayal that paved his downfall, not necessarily any political fault of his own. It was personality which won the day at Bosworth: the Earl of Richmond, the future Henry VII, is younger, better looking and more spritely than poor old King Dick.
Decent photography, a little studio bound until the final battle [filmed in Spain, I guess for the weather, but nowhere in England looks like that battlefield…] gaudy costumes and an over-the-top music score from Sir William Walton contribute to a bits-and-bobs experience that will reward some, but not others. Still at least it wasn’t four hours long like the stage play.
@chrisno1 disses Dickens, now Shakespeare, which English scribe will next get it in the neck?
I am behind the curve on the MI thing, I caught up with MI: Dead Reckoning Part I if that's what it called, on Channel 4, as the latest in cinemas is Final Reckoning it maybe raises the tantalising prospect of an unknown MI film, Dead Reckoning Part II, hidden in a time capsule somewhere.
The penultimate film got some negative press as it was filmed in lockdown and some critics said it showed, so that was one reason I didn't see it when it came out, that and I'd have liked to see it at the Waterloo Imax but that can set you back £30, then with a train fare and a stop at Pret, you're talking £50-£60 easy. I think Kevin Mahler of the Times was disparaging but he tends to be about everything.
I liked it a lot, more than just about all the MI films, for me it evoked happy memories of the latter Roger Moore Bonds. I can find hardly anything bad to say about it, if I do it's just nitpicking.
From the very first, the MI films tended to outBond Bond, I mean I can dip into GoldenEye when it's on telly but I didn't much like it at the time and I still don't as a movie... bits of it I like whereas the first Mission Impossible, released subsequently, was Brian DePalma, had some great scenes in it, all nicely thought out, again it seems to utilise British set pieces - the Channel Tunnel - in a way that the Bonds don't bother to do. Likewise, MI2 pilfered the sexy car chase between Bond and the femme fatale from GE and imo just made it better, MI3 did the freeing of Sanchez in LTK only, again, it's the full big budget experience, it's done better whereas the Bonds used to pilfer from other movies and do it better, now they are getting magpied. What we see in this one is that stuff that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny tried to do (where whole scenes, such as the Tut chase or deep diving for treasure only to hand it to the waiting villains) mimic Bond) but this MI does it better, DOD had just too grim a flavour. It's a trap these films fall into - as if to say, hey, okay this is yet another movie but hold tight because we're going to put some grim, nasty stuff in to show you have to take it seriously. The lightness, the flightiness isn't there.
So with this one, well, if you thought the car chase in Rome in Spectre was oddly devoid of traffic, well, Dead Reckoning puts that right in a way that makes you think, what happened, did EON/MGM not have the money to bribe someone here? Barbara Broccoli suggested that money was an issue under the recent studios and if so I am very glad it's with Amazon now because sometimes it just comes down to budget. Never with an MI action scene do I think it's been done half-arsed or could have been bettered. They deliver.
The Rome chase scene also borrows from TND in that the escaping pair are handcuffed, and also from FYEO in that the car they have to make do with is a yellow tin pot thing. It even seems to troll Spectre in that Cruise's Hunt is presented with a flash Aston Martin type car but no, realises he has to take the other one, as if to say, hey, you had Bond in that flash car (and the joke was it's gadgets didn't work) but we can put our hero in the rickety kind of rubbish that shows up in Spectre in a comic moment, and still make it better.
It helps that the MI films know their brief, know to lean knowingly into the comedy of the thing, so the action can work. One snag with the post Brosnan Bonds is that they have a different director each time so Bond's world, and his reality, changes also. This happened only once before, from TB to LALD, and certainly those films feel a bit odd in relation to each other (and that's not including CR 67). The action in the recent MI films is not Marvel territory but it's not Bourne either, it isn't realistic but you don't feel it because the film knows what it's trying to be whereas with recent Bonds, it feels like they have to reinvent the wheel a bit each time.
I suppose at the cinema I might have noticed that some scenes just end and Cruise is then somewhere else but on telly with a glass of wine, I didn't notice or care, I just went with it. It helps that the whole thing is always very simplistic in terms of plot, but again, oh I forgot, I mean the opening is a nod to stuff like The Hunt for Red October and of course The Spy Who Loved Me, the savage climax reminding us that the Russian submarine has been navigating under the Polar Ice Cap, it's done like the opening credits of a Bond film, but with meaning. The budget is important because Bond films like TND nodded to the past but didn't do anything much better and if you can't do the same thing again but bigger and better, you're into diminishing returns.
EDIT: The pre-credits is very long, I've never before seen a film where once the credits finish we go straight into a long overdue ad break.
Cruise does look old in this one, for the first time. Maybe Covid meant he couldn't get his usual work done. He looks better in the latest one, from what I've seen, though as an actor he has that Paul McCartney/Cliff Richard thing going on - short hair, Beatle Paul, long hair, it's Wings, short hair it's pre 65 and Summer Holiday, long hair it's Devil Woman, both looking totally different. That said, Cruise looks nothing like his depiction on the poster where he seems to be from his film The Firm, I mean Rog aged but they did make the posters reflect that. Talking of which, we could do with better posters for these films, maybe @emtiem could rustle up one?
The whole of this film just flowed and what I liked was it didn't try too hard, it didn't have discordant aspects that I've found In most other MI films trying to make it hurt. I think I switched off MI3 because I found Philip Seymour Hoffman's villain too horrible and the prospect of his wife's plight too grim. MI4 was Dubai wasn't it? I don't recall much else about it, was that the one in which the Kremlin blew up? The films have struggled with the silliness of the face mask thing and having it done too repetitively. Also how to explain Hunt's perennial single status, which it does but none too happily. The last one had great action scenes but I don't find Henry Cavill an easy screen presence, something about him I can't explain though in theory I like him. And some of these films, you do get the impression that the IMF is a pretty nasty organisation in the tricks it pulls on people. Then there's the one - or two - with Alec Baldwin, who now leaves a bad taste.
None of that here. Okay the McGuffin is amazingly crap, I mean if there are two keys and together they are dangerous, but you have in your possession one of them, then rather than try to find the other, you might just bin the one half you have to make it null and void, eh? We are meant to overlook that but watching on telly with a drink, I do. And there's a lot of pickpocketing going on that might tire in a cinema theatre but... Yes, there's exposition but I prefer that to movies where you really don't know what's going on and you suspect that's the point. One downside, the main villain here is a bit of a cypher, and not that menacing, and it does a bit of the retcon thing that Spectre did (don't borrow that, guys!) and also the Keaton-Nicolson Batman movie, But I did find the AI villain The Entity very timely, more so now than I would have done on its release I suspect (Grok is a scary bit of kit).
I may see the current one in cinemas but if some of the now redundant MI team can be signed up for Bond, we could be in for a treat and good riddance to the recent films. I know the Bonds do have a struggle to come up with new stuff - what charms in a non-Bond film is one thing but in an actual Bond film just gets the old 'oh, they're repeating themselves' line, while coming up with a new song each time, well, they haven't had any classics have they. And the MI has a very simple premise or McGuffin - it's 'we have to find this dangerous tool' or 'there's a traitor in our team' or 'they think I'm the traitor in the team' so it's one long chase scene after another, but it does work. I'm not sure it's easy to crowbar the Bond template into the modern video game styling.
Supposedly charming black and white film about a young maybe teenage European princess from a nameless country (she speaks English but it's made clear she's not, then again its star Audrey Hepburn was from Holland wasn't she?) goes AWOL on a publicity trip to Rome. She runs into local American hack Gregory Peck who initially doesn't recognise her and lets her kip overnight at his rather lovely apartment with a view of the city... only in the morning when she's on the front pages - said to have had an illness and consigned to her bed while her protectors try to find her) does he twig and then he sets about getting a story out of it, prolonging their association.
Well, it is charming but the early stuff left a bad taste as Peck's leading man does seem on the make early on, and doesn't seem too charming either to be ready to leave her in a taxi with a driver to sleep it off, I mean okay it's Rome not Rotherham but even so.
In early scenes an out-of-it Hepburn resembles Grace Kelly's posh girl getting tipsy in High Society, which I think came later... edit, yes it did, it's 1956, then again, HS was a remake of The Philadelphia Story which I still haven't got round to seeing, so maybe she nicked it from her namesake's performance in that. That got me thinking, well, wouldn't Sinatra be a better fit for the US journalist than Peck? He plays a similar role in High Society and does it well, he could do the comedy better and make the sneaky go-getting less horrible somehow. And given his Italian heritage, it might make more sense to have him as a jobbing hack in Rome? Or was that played down at that time? Perhaps we'd expect him to sing 'Three Coins in the Fountain'. Then again, I'm not sure Sinatra could have pulled off the scene were se falls for Hepburn's princess, did he ever that kind of truly romantic scene? I'm trying to think. like Connery in his films I'm not sure he ever really gave himself over to a woman, or got past that sexual banter phase. And at any rate we are spared dismal tales of whether Sinatra tried to cop off with Hepburn behind the scenes, or whether they got on at all.
The scenery - it's all shot in Rome, the film boasts in the opening credits - is very lovely. Hepburn in her main debut, for which she won an Oscar, is very good though very like other roles in My Fair Lady where she goes on to impersonate an aristocrat. It's hard to watch it and not think of Princess Diana, that said I guess the whole thing was modelled on Princess Elizabeth... will have to look at the dates to see if she'd been made Queen by that point. Edit, yes she was made Queen in 1952. Roman Holiday is not bogged down by extraneous players, like what her parents think of her going missing, or any emotional distress behind the scenes... It's not Summer Holiday where Cliff unknowingly absconds with a millionaire's daughter mascerading as a boy and her parents go in pursuit.
David Zaritsky's take on Final Reckoning and what the Bond movies can learn from it. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has many good points and the Bond movies can learn important lessons from MI:
Stephen Boyd stars alongside Raquel Welch in a good looking science fiction nonsense that succeeds despite its many anatomical and physical plot holes. The best science fiction attempts to blend science fact with a thrilling story, this one merely has a thrilling story. Aided by some excellent [for the day] photography, special effects, design and sound, Richard Fleischer’s two hours of bodily hokum passes by in a whirl and features plenty of amusing fun and games among the occasional tensions and over indulgent sermonising.
Dr Jan Benes has been abducted from an unnamed foreign power, but enemy agents intercept his cortege and following a car crash he is put into an induced coma while surgeons operate on a blood clot on his brain. To do this, and do this quickly, Boyd, Welch, Donald Pleasance, Arthur Kennedy and William Redfield are placed in a submersible and shrunk to the size of an atom before being injected into Benes’s bloodstream. The aim is to operate from inside the body and laser blast the blood clot to oblivion. Naturally the hazardous journey through a man’s body is fraught with known and unknown danger, including a fused fistula, a trip through the man’s heart and an attack of white blood cells. There’s even a traitor on board!
Action galore and a whole load of baloney, but thoroughly enjoyable, tense when it matters and played so straight you could almost believe it was true. In a great era of forward thinking sci-fi, Fantastic Voyage stands out as one of the more bizarre, but also one of the most successful movies. If you haven’t seen it, suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours and watch Miss Welch get stalked by fluffy cotton special effects.
Isaac Asimov wrote the novelisation and wrote it so fast the book appeared before the film was released, so many mistakenly thought the film was based on Asimov’s writings. He spent time correcting many of the screenplay’s scientific errors, although he considered the central shrinking premise to be impossible.
H.G. Wells’s novel is adapted for the big screen by Alexander Korda. Huge sets and expensive special effects just about make it watchable today, but the film is overly optimistic, naïve and rather dull. A decades long world war plunges the whole of human civilisation towards the brink of extinction. The harrowing nature of war is well portrayed, mixing First World War trench warfare images with air bombing imaginations. Watching those scenes now feels prescient of the looming Second World War. Things to Come indeed…
The city of Everytown – an SFX version of London – is wiped out. Interest switches to Ralph Richardson’s warlord dictator, a man forming his kingdom from the ashes and dust of chaos, war and plague. He’s thwarted by an idealised faction calling themselves Wings Over The World, who are building great cities in the Middle East. Mankind recovers but peace brings a new kind of dictatorship and the relentless pursuit of progress itself becomes a contentious issue. Revolution stalks the future.
Superb city designs are let down by having everyone look as if they just escaped from Korda’s aborted I Claudius – togas and sandals abound. William Cameron Menzies is a solid choice of director, uninteresting visually and dull with actors. The stage school theatre accents don’t aid authenticity – where are all the working class men and women? Britain’s belated answer to Metropolis, but not a patch on it. Ambitious, but flawed.
Danny Dyer’s working class assassin falls for the daughter of a man he has just killed. She’s a stripper in a dingy London clip joint. He works for the Albert Brothers, two shady businessmen with a criminal past. They are played with some menace by Martin and Gary Kemp, a riff on their earlier roles as the Kray Twins. Love doesn’t run smooth for gangster types and things naturally take a turn for the worse. It is all a bit simplistic and sleazy and doesn’t last very long. The movie effectively ended Dyer’s acting career. He is now big in reality TV. Dyer was never a great actor, but he channels his inner Jason Statham for a role of much restraint but powerful inner turmoil and seething anger. Pity the decent(ish) performance doesn’t have a decent(ish) story to support it. Holly Weston, who was big in soap opera Hollyoaks, plays the pretty love interest.
An unusual late period Hammer horror that seems more concerned with insomnia, insanity, incest, impotence and the early days of psychoanalysis than it is with the psychopathic tendencies of its villainous protagonists. Robert Hardy is miscast as Baron Zorn, a man convinced his inability to sleep with his wife, following a horrific virginal wedding night and her supposed nymphomania, led to her suicide. The Baron believes his children have inherited his blood lust, has shut them away from the world leading to their sibling affair. Disgusted, he has begun to bleed them, hoping to release the evil but only leading to anaemia and a mental breakdown for the son. The daughter briefly escaped the locked doors of his castle, but a wild romance with Paul Jones’s medical student has only led to her recapture and more incarceration. Which is where we join the story…
Enter Patrick Magee’s mesmerist, who determines to ‘cure’ the teenagers but instead uncovers the truth behind the Baron’s family secrets. Meanwhile Micheal Hordern’s crazed priest incites the villagers to excise the demon from their estate, convinced it is the Baron’s cabal who are killing the local girls. All paths lead to death, destruction, blood, burning crosses and naked women. Nice.
Demons of the Mind touches on too many subjects to be successful and the final revelation is muddled. If anything it behaves more like one of the short-lived ‘folk horror’ cycle of the era, what with its focus on the psychological makeup of its murderers, as well as the pseudo-religious angle provided by the priest and the pagan rites of the villagers. Along with Captain Kronos, Twins of Evil and To the Devil a Daughter, the film stands as an attempt to alter the output of Hammer films into something more substantial than mere vampires and mummies. It doesn’t quite work, but it is a brave attempt. Arthur Grant’s photography illuminates the interiors brilliantly [the movie was shot on location at Bolney Castle] but there’s nowt he can do with all that dreadful moneysaving day-for-night shooting. Peter Sykes directs adequately.
You might suppose from the title that this film would be racist, and you'd be right. It's also classist and sexist, and no doubt a few more "ists" that I haven't picked up on. We follow a standard film horror plot of a young couple whose honeymoon turns out to be not what they have bargained for, especially when they run into a man called (I kid thee not) Murder Legendre played by the one and only Bela Lugosi.
You don't think he's the villain, do you? Some scenes from this were used in Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" biopic. The film creaks at the seams and really is only for film historians (and there are better films from that period) or Lugosi fans, like me.
CURSE OF THE FLY (Don Sharp) 1966
Third in the original "Fly" series, and it takes a complete step away from its predecessors but still looks at the possible horrible effects of teleportation. Some good shock moments. It stars Brian Donlevy (Quatermass) and our own George Baker (Sir Hilary Bray in OHMSS, Captain Benson in TSWLM) with our own Burt Kwouk (Mr Ling in GF, No 3 in YOLT) in a supporting role. Pretty good as these things go.
While everyone’s been wittering on about the toothsome Tom Cruise and his MI stunt-fest, the Bank Holiday weekend in the UK saw a brief Jason Bourne Season, brief because the fifth film wasn’t included in the schedules. I have the five films in a box set, but my Dad wanted to watch this and there was bugger all on the telly that Friday night.
Doug Liman is an unusual director to find helming an action thriller. It is worth noting that while The Bourne Identity does contain vicious and spectacular action it is mostly a thoughtful, thought-provoking and intelligent dialogue driven thriller that prefers suspense and intrigue to gunbattles and fistfights. They are there, of course, but they do not take centre stage. Instead, Matt Damon’s American assassin Jason Bourne embarks on a relationship of mutual need with Franka Potente’s German drifter Marie Kreutz, and it is how these two lonely hearts interact across the spectrum of violence, death and pursuit that draws an audience into the narrative and provides a story of much depth and character, assets one would expect from indie director Liman, a man for whom personalities are more important that process.
Hence, The Bourne Identity has a simplistic jigsaw puzzle feel to it. Liman isn’t interested in the rough, tough action or the American [read CIA] foreign policy, he’s looking at the people and the way they interact. So while Damon and Potente embark on a furtive love affair among the hooded streets of Paris, avoiding bullets and knives and hotel concierges with maximum efficiency, we have a counter affair breaking down at Treadstone Headquarters as top boss Ward Abbott [a grizzling Brian Cox] and his secret underling Alexander Conklin [a harassed Chris Cooper] attempt to pull rogue agent Jason Bourne back into the fold. Their spiky friendship ends in eventual dismissal. Cooper becomes more and more a desperate man the longer his hunt for Bourne continues and continues unsuccessfully. He shouts and sweats and frowns, he even takes out his wrath on poor Nicky Parsons – a hopelessly underused and seemingly miscast Julia Stiles – who is holding up the Paris end of the Treadstone organisation. This shadowy bureau within a bureau has been set up specifically as an assassination unit, packed full of highly trained and indoctrinated agents, a reverse of those Chinese sleepers in The Manchurian Candidate, who at a moment’s notice will design and carry out a notified kill. We witness other agents separating themselves from their day jobs and their families. This draws the audience away from the fun and silliness of the cinematic spy game and into the realities of espionage, that it occurs around us and without our knowledge. In fact, Jason Bourne’s journey is exactly ours: he is suffering from retrograde amnesia and pieces the puzzle of his life together at exactly the same moments that we do [although the Treadstone scenes offer us more background than he gains]. Again, Liman, as director and script supervisor essentially recognises that Bourne’s predicament must resonate with the audience to allow sympathy to build.
To that end they provide one of the finest openings to a thriller movie in cinema history: the crew of Mediterranean fishing vessel rescue an unconscious man from the waves, he has been shot and the only identity he carries is an inch long chrome battery sewn into his hip, a device whose torch beam projects the details of a Zurich bank account. As the rescued man travels to Zurich, discovers a cask of money, guns, passports and equipment in the sealed deposit box, he becomes as confused and concerned as we are. That he keeps speaking automatically in foreign tongues and acting violently against his natural instincts point us to the future that will unravel. Meanwhile pretty Marie can’t get her work permit and risks being thrown out of Switzerland. Bourne offers her $10000 to drive him to Paris. She needs the money; he knows it; she knows it. The scene where he persuades her, cautiously, carefully, yet convincingly is the moment we, and Bourne, also recognise he has tact and an empathetic ear. It is these tendencies that enable us to accept the premise that Marie assist Bourne during his detective hunt, even after the twosome are attacked by a machine gun and dagger wielding assassin. At this moment, their subsequent passionate coupling seems more akin to catharsis than actual desire, but you sense in Damon’s and Potente’s deliberately awkward performances their attraction building; there is as much intrigue for them to find in each other as there is for the audience. Meanwhile, Conklin is going crazy at Treadstone as Bourne thwarts one attempt after another to be brought in or eliminated.
Robert Ludlum’s spy novel was a huge success in 1980. Screenwriter Tony Gilroy jettisons most of the text because it concerned the hunt for Carlos the Jackal, a real life killer who was solidly behind bars in 2002. Gilroy retained the opening sequences and the overarching assassination organisation, there named the Treadstone 71 Corporation. Although Ludlum’s novel includes some action, like the director it was the evolving relationships which most interested him. Hence, Gilroy takes those moments as his potentates. We witness Maria providing sensible assistance to Bourne, while he does all the spy-craft, not always when necessary. Several times he attempts to persuade her to escape, considering she is safer without him, but she refuses to obey, even appearing at times to enjoy the subterfuge – until the twosome are tracked to a remote farmhouse and the jeopardy of her situation, how it endangers even unconcerned people from her past, is revealed in stark butchery and death. There is a brilliant sequence where Bourne watches over two children, contemplating his and their future; this is significant as it is later revealed Bourne fled his last mission due to the presence of children at the scene. So, his conscience was clicking into gear even as the rotaries of Treadstone tried to control his actions.
The film is punctuated by a quintet of exceptional action sequences: a tight, taut escape from the US Embassy; the gritty, bloody assassin’s fight; a Paris car chase of much jollity and gripping tension; the tracker-style, western-movie, farmhouse gunbattle; and the slam-bang Paris climax where Bourne confronts Conklin. Each of these is fantastically well edited, sharp, incisive and keen as a whippet. The stylised swift intercutting of the film would become a standard for action thrillers in the years to come, so-much-so even James Bond, who tended always to walk his own walk, was accused of fey imitation when Quantum of Solace premiered in 2008. Saar Klein should take many plaudits for his scissor-work, and not only during the violent scenes; the rapid, slightly dysfunctional editing creeps into the everyday, lending a fractured emotional pull to the personal narratives director Doug Liman is creating. The Treadstone HQ scenes thus become as intimately suspenseful as those in Paris and Zurich. Oliver Wood photographs the rough and the smooth with an eye for detail and roaming assuredness: we miss nothing: everything of importance is on show, in focus, front and centre. One might suggest this makes the film unoriginal, but in an era when moviemakers prefer to hide their truths, to be so obvious was and still is refreshing and successful. Liman handles his characters with alternating hard and soft hands depending on which side of the pond they are sitting. He wisely delegated most of the action to his second unit crew. The music comes courtesy of John Powell and is mostly non-orchestral, a thumping, driving, techno score of much aplomb, benefitted by Moby and Paul Oakenfold contributing dance tracks of energy and resonance. Even the closing credits, which resemble a computer motherboard, are intriguing. The film, despite being American funded and focussed, has a curiously European vibe to it, the understated nature of its episodes and protagonists hinting at the same wily ghouls, errant strangers and bitter confrontations, secrets and lies found in Vienna for The Third Man or Berlin for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Like those films, based in real locations and dealing with real time problems wide and small, Jason Bourne’s slightly more fantastical narrative clings effortlessly to the idea it just might all be genuine.
The Bourne Identity was released in the summer of 2002 to great acclaim. It spawned four sequels and remains a thunderously good spy thriller which I can watch over again without any lessening of enjoyment. I still remember how breathless I felt watching it one evening at the Sutton Empire, on my own I recall because of a general antithesis in the friendship group towards Matt Damon. Never understood that. When I left, I felt this was the James Bond movie I wanted to see: character, story and action combining in a flurry of tension and excitement, underscored by a believable and contemporary plot. What did I get that winter? Die Another Day. In some ways, the Bond franchise never recovered from the contrast, it tried to imitate, then it chose arthouse glamour and gloomy visuals as a substitute for personality. One thing The Bourne Identity and its descendants has in spades is a central personality-personalities, not only in the multidimensional characters, which help an audience empathise and root for or against them, but in the cinematic presentation, the fashionable zippy surface glamour mixing with grim and grimy determination, a reality of possibilities which oozes confidence and subtlety while never neglecting the central core of entertainment.
I saw White Zombie again a couple of months ago after a gap of probably over 40 years. I was hoping that I had missed things then that I appreciate more in old age but unfortunately it still remains a stilted dull affair.
Curse Of The Fly is underrated. I like the original Fly trilogy more than the modern 2-movie remakes.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,872Chief of Staff
IDENTITY, SUPREMACY, and ULTIMATUM make for a pretty darned great action/spy/thriller trilogy. I also liked LEGACY for what it was: a standalone adventure. The fifth one, JASON BOURNE, is a middling effort that feels like a cash grab rather than a fully formed film.
Thank you @Sir Miles - I didn't spend so long over this one:
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004)
An above average sequel thriller that both retreads familiar ground seen in the first film and continues that story’s narrative effectively. In The Bourne Supremacy Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne has found a semblance of an existence living with Franka Potente’s Marie Kreutz in Goa, India. When an assassin attempts to eliminate him, Bourne believes Treadstone has been reactivated. Cue more tension, pursuit and death around Europe, culminating in a slam-bang-thank-you-ma’am car chase through Moscow.
Brian Cox’s Ward Abbott returns to embody office boy villainy at its oldest, decayed and most decrepitly corrupt. Joan Allen brings some decency to proceedings as incorruptible CIA headsman Pamela Landy. Moments of pithy humour save Tony Gilroy’s script from being a grim fest all-round. It isn’t as startling as The Bourne Identity, chiefly because the revelations are not new, but it pulls the strings when it needs to and director Paul Greengrass keeps a short rein on the actors and a long rein the action. Sharp editing makes it a tough watch; you really need to concentrate. The handheld camera work doesn’t help either, the film is very jumpy. Viewed twenty years on, the freewheeling style doesn’t seem anywhere near as annoying as it did in 2004. That’s a credit to the Bourne Cycle, demonstrating just how influential they have been on the cinematic presentation of suspense, intrigue and violence.
As it happens, Supremacy is a curiously low-key film in the violence stakes, but a rewarding couple of hour’s entertainment nonetheless whose exposition in clever enough to not reveal any hidden plot holes.
As sequels go, very fine indeed.
Sir MilesThe Wrong Side Of The WardrobePosts: 30,872Chief of Staff
Can’t disagree with any of that @chrisno1 they are two very fine films indeed 🍸
Can't wait to hear what you think of ULTIMATUM. I think SUPREMACY may be my favorite of the trilogy but ULTIMATUM has the best overall fight/action scene.
Also, I think Paul Greengrass was the overall 'best' director for delivering handheld camera action scenes. For many directors, handheld camera sequences come off as chaotic messes without any flow. For Greengrass and his editors, they make it all work and actually flow.
While The Bourne Ultimatum shares its title with Robert Ludlum’s third Bourne novel, like its predecessor The Bourne Supremacy, the film is a completely original adventure. Writers Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns & George Nolfi, director Paul Greengrass and overseeing exec Doug Liman revive the story of Jason Bourne by continuing in the well-trod vein of the previous movies. Bourne’s memory is gradually returning, but despite attempts to contact people from his past, he only experiences brutal flashbacks. When a CIA director gets cold feet over the new Treadstone project – named Black Briar – and sells the story to Paddy Considine’s British newspaperman, Bourne jets off to wintery London to uncover more of his life from journalist Simon Ross. Thus, Bourne sets in motion a series of rushed assassinations, chases and fights as the CIA director in charge of Black Briar seeks to bring him down.
This bunch of high velocity villains is played by Davd Strathairn, Scott Glenn and Edgar Ramirez. Albert Finney crops up as a psychoanalyst overseeing the assassination training program. This particular casting made me raise an eyebrow. I had completely forgotten Finney was in Ultimatum – was this, I wonder, why the Bond producers cast him in Skyfall? To stick a thumb up at the US producers of their closest ever cinematic competitor and say: “We can use him better than you can?” [Neither franchise utilised Finney very well, IMO.] Thing is, it stinks more of a desperate move to imitate; even though the roles are dramatically different, to bring in a monumental star, a man whose acting ability trounces almost everybody on the set, boosts the gravitas of the movie. The Bond franchise seemed to use him for mild humour; here, Finney is all calm, controlled menace. Meanwhile, Joan Allen’s Pamela Landy is drawn back into the fray as a stooge for the Agency’s uncontrollable killing assets. Matt Damon remains as bleakly unemotional as Finney in playing the titular Bourne. He has some cute scenes with Julia Stiles, who returns as Nicky Parsons, the nervy foreign attaché who, it turns out, once had an affair with him – Bourne’s amnesia is clearly critical if he forgets making love to the lovely Julia Stiles… Still, ho-hum…
Chase follows fight follows chase; there is a fantastic piece of filming in and around Waterloo Station, London, as Bourne contacts and tries to protect Simon Ross while the CIA prowls the concourse hunting them down. Tense isn’t half the word. Unfortunately, the film therefore has frontloaded its own assets and afterwards the action becomes repetitive and can’t touch the heights reached in London. Similar situations in Tangiers and New York only result in similar confusion and death. There is a neat scene midmovie where the end of the previous episode is replayed, upsetting the belief all we saw in Supremacy takes place before Ultimatum.
One can’t fault the product in the visual creative spheres. It is phenomenally well constructed and individually not a single scene disappoints. It is only when taken as a whole that the movie seems to lurch a bit, staggering from one pulsating punch or crunching car crash to another. There is just about time to draw breath before the next sequence is upon us. Much like Supremacy, and only a little like Identity, the editing is swifter than a hare at the races and you need to concentrate harder than Mesmer to keep up with the twisting, fragmented plotting. The only issue I had with the narrative was its too fast timeline. The early thread about the newspaper article would take days or weeks to reach publication, but the writers have it hitting The Guardian front pages in hours. People travel between countries and get tracked around cities so fast you do wonder if it is technologically possible in real time to do this. [Is there a techy expert out there who can confirm or deny whether the kind of close surveillance shown at the Black Briar HQ is genuinely possible?] Oddly, it seems convenient that Bourne travels around the world without being tracked by the CIA when everyone else is picked up like a firefly in the dark.
Still, I am only nit-picking.
The Bourne Ultimatum effectively finishes the trilogy, even if the ending is as open-ended as you can possibly get. It’s a very good thriller, pacy and dramatic with a ton of suspense, especially early on. The notion even a nation’s security services are both fallible and corrupt isn’t new, but it feels new. Great propelling music [again] from John Powell.
The Morocco fight in ULTIMATUM is amazing. There are many great fights in the franchise but that one really sticks out for the incredible camera work and the overall execution.
I had to dip into the DVD collection to watch this one:
THE BOURNE LEGACY (2012)
An excellent fourth instalment of the Jason Bourne Series departs from its main subject – and from Erik Van Lustbader’s novel of the same name – and pitches a parallel story to The Bourne Ultimatum. As the CIA bigwigs get spooked by Bourne’s continued presence and the ‘threat’ he poses by exposing their assassination programs, Edward Norton’s steely Eric Byer is tasked with overseeing the closure of all such secret projects: Treadstone, Black Briar, Larx and Outcome. Unknown to Byer, an Outcome agent, Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross, escaped his execution in the Alaskan wilderness and is out hunting, not for revenge, but for the chemical medications that keep his brain functioning super efficiently and his body in peak physical condition.
Outcome and Treadstone were run hand in hand at the sophisticated medical research laboratory managed by the Sterisyn Morlanta Corporation in upstate New York. There, Rachel Weisz’s nervous virologist Dr Marta Shearing narrowly escapes her own murder, but needs Cross’s sudden appearance to prevent a return attempt by a D-phase CIA unit. On the run, the two form an uneasy partnership, Cross performing all the natty espionage craft and violent rescue, Shearling providing the scientific brains, as well as a barometer of the audience’s emotions – I mean, crikey, how would you feel if all your close colleagues are wiped out in the lab one day and the next afternoon four CIA stooges start ripping your house to shreds? Weisz gives the role everything she’s got and is mightily convincing. Renner too manages to bring moments of humanity to a blank killing machine. His scenes with an uncommunicative fellow agent [Oscar Isaac] in an Alaskan log cabin have real power and pathos. These are men with personal histories, but they have been indoctrinated to forget, ignore and avoid those people, emotions and loyalties. The nation and the program is all that matters. Cross and his ilk are genetic mutations, similar to the kind of ‘superhuman’ the East German’s created by pumping athletes with steroids. What the Outcome program hasn’t managed to do is to eliminate the sympathetic instinct. That seems to have been naturally developed out by the bloodthirsty and single minded overseers of these programs, as well as driven, robotic, militaristic fire fighters like Eric Byer.
From a mountainous snowy retreat where drone missiles rain death, through a taut showdown in Marta’s backwoods house, to the heat and hustling streets of Manilla, crosscut with scenes of anxiety, intrusion and argument at CIA HQ, the action is skilfully wrapped up by writer-director Tony Gilroy. Gilroy also wrote the first three films in the series, so he has a heads-up about how to present both info and incident. The flashbacks and flash forwards are expertly used to fill in the blanks of the story here, as well as answering questions raised by the Bourne specific episodes. The film looks great. The support performances have a pointed urgency to them often missing in film’s such as this. The editing, as you would now expect, is fast and furiously sharp. Legacy perhaps lacks the tightening tender hooks of tension we saw under Greengrass and Liman’s work, but still does a fine job of gathering suspense and speed. If the final chase feels a mite long winded, there is a least a satisfying coda that leaves all doors open to more sequels.
Comments
I took in THUNDERBOLTS* at a matinee yesterday... Marvel movies have gotten more like Grand Opera lately, but this was a nice change of pace...fast-moving, funny, and self-spoofing--like good superhero movies should be. Bond fans should note that Olga Kurylenko gets a high billing, but you see her for LITERALLY about five seconds. If she's your only reason for going, stay home.
A FEW GOOD MEN (1992)
I last watched this in 2021 and there's a review online here somewhere. I seem to watch A Few Good Men every few years without my enjoyment lessening. Tom Cruise must have been in his early thirties, but still manages to look as if he’s just left high school, which puts him at a disadvantage when confronting Jack Nicholson’s weathered Marine’s colonel over the court room witness box. A very good script demands our attention and the actors deliver all the expected highs and lows. It’s difficult to fault. Exceedingly well-made and like all great trial dramas the heady sphere of the courts of law provide all the excitement, even if it is all done sitting down. I’d easily rate this as one of Cruise’s best all-round performances and one of his best all-round movies, high school good-looks or not.
Mission Impossible - the final reckoning (2025)
I think we can safely say the MI movie series is James Bond's main competitor in the spy action-adventure genere. So how is it? It's a great movie in its genere. Some of the scenes are spectacular! Bond26 needs to be at least as good as this. But there are problems. The first act of the film is mostly plot dumping and mythlogizing Tom Cr ... I mean Ethan Hunt. it would be better if they got to the Barents Sea (actually Svalbard) much quicker. I find some of the movie too pompous and I found some religious references and practically making Cruises character as the whole world's Messiah a bit too much. So, fantastic action movie, but the series and tom Cruise needs to lighten up and not take themselves so seriously.
MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - THE FINAL RECKONING
The bad: the first act is really clunky with a lot of exposition to do two things: remind viewers what happened in DEAD RECKONING and also remind viewers what happened in the first six movies. The pacing is off and the narrative isn't very smooth, jerking around here and there. I suspect that a lot was edited here to help try and bring the already long runtime down.
That's really about it for 'bad', though.
The good: once you're past that first act and the film settles into the true narrative of the story, the film takes off. The narrative is smooth and the set pieces line up nicely. I'd like to particularly note the big submarine sequence. That is set up as something that's going to happen in the first act. It take about an hour to get there in the story but it's all a matter of getting through escalating events to set it up. Once it hits, it's a masterpiece of tension and one of the best overall sequences of the entire franchise. It's just escalating tension for probably 30 minutes. The good news is that that sequence is topped by the incredible biplane sequence featured in the movie trailers. Thankfully, the trailers have only teased what actually happens in that sequence...it's a real jaw dropper.
My wife really, really liked this and cited it as her favorite of the franchise. I would not go that far (I think ROGUE NATION and FALLOUT are better) but it's really, really good.
Suggestions: You're obviously going to want to rewatch DEAD RECKONING before seeing this. I'd also consider rewatching DEAD RECKONING M:I 3. The third film is surprisingly important to the narrative in this film. It's not a crisis if you don't rewatch it but you'll reap some benefits if you do (or if you remember it well).
In my opinion the best part of the submarine sequence is when Hunt is inside the sub. It's sensational! The rest of the submarine sequence will never show up on "Tom Cruise doing his own stunts" DVD special features. It just Cruise in diving gear reacting to CGI.
Made some edits to my post for clarity. I wrote that on my phone and it looks like it came out as a jumble of words in places. Sorry.
While yes, a lot of the 'exterior' shots of the submarine sequence are CGI and model based, they're fantastic. Him exiting the Ohio and seeing that Russian sub following closely is amazing.
I agree, but I'm less impressed by the next minutes of the movie. The scenes from inside the sunk sub are however first rate.
I loved what followed. Somewhat spoilery but him getting caught up in the Ohio's wake and then getting dragged along the Russian sub's hull was awesome.
Calvin Dyson brings up a good point in his review of this movie. People in MI tell the Tom Cruise character how wonderful he is and he's the only one who can save al humankind. In James Bond movies it's never said even though he has saved the world several times. At least it's never said to his face. Perhaps it's a British vs American thing, and personally I like the British way better. Tom Cruise being the producer of this movie and still allowing (or maybe even pushing for?) his character being portrayed as and talked about as some kind of Messiah makes me wonder about Cruise's psyche, especially since the line between the character and the actor sometimes blurs. . To be clear, in spite of my misgivings about final Reckoning I still think it's an amazing action movie.
My MI take will come soon (ish) ... Meanwhile...
RICHARD III (1955)
A great performance from Laurence Olivier as the title character of Shakespeare’s history play, can’t save Richard III from being just a trifle dull. This often happens when the Bard casts his quill over the history of Merrie England; so intent to present an accurate misreading of true events is Our Will that he has a tendency to overindulge himself and buries most of the first two or three acts in a waffle of historical scene setting and character introduction before the excitement kicks in for the last third or so. Olivier, as adaptor, director and actor does his best to cut out the waffle and get on with things, but it is still a humdrum affair, enlivened by Olivier, John Gielgud and Sir Cedric Hardwicke delivering the goods and Ralph Richardson looking uncomfortable as the Duke of Buckingham, one of Richard’s closest supporters. Stanley Baker crops up late on as Henry VII. All these acting-knights and you do think we should have a more engrossing product to view.
What we do have dawdles and deadens and if it wasn’t for Olivier, I would have turned off. Many rank his Richard as the finest of his Shakespearian turns and you can see why. Sly and sneaky, snakelike and spindled, sensuous and snivelling, his Richard III is a villain of some substance and much contradiction. How Olivier matches his character’s movements to his speeches and circumstances is the key to his success. Early on he strides confidently around an empty cathedral, warning the audience of his intention to wear the crown of England. The soliloquies are spoken directly to camera, making this filmic version of the Bard much more intimate and theatre-like than others. Having proposed to Claire Bloom’s Lady Anne, he stoically takes her rejection, gently touching the cheek she spat upon. Later, sure of his victory at Bosworth, he is efficient, lenient and confident, and his loping stride becomes stronger, the back not so arched. It is only when he conspires and deals in death and villainy that he bends and stoops and hobbles. While many critics frequently lambast the play for its one-sided portrait of Richard III, it is noticeable how clear Shakespeare makes it that the unfortunate king did once have the support of the people, church and gentry, that it was betrayal that paved his downfall, not necessarily any political fault of his own. It was personality which won the day at Bosworth: the Earl of Richmond, the future Henry VII, is younger, better looking and more spritely than poor old King Dick.
Decent photography, a little studio bound until the final battle [filmed in Spain, I guess for the weather, but nowhere in England looks like that battlefield…] gaudy costumes and an over-the-top music score from Sir William Walton contribute to a bits-and-bobs experience that will reward some, but not others. Still at least it wasn’t four hours long like the stage play.
@chrisno1 disses Dickens, now Shakespeare, which English scribe will next get it in the neck?
I am behind the curve on the MI thing, I caught up with MI: Dead Reckoning Part I if that's what it called, on Channel 4, as the latest in cinemas is Final Reckoning it maybe raises the tantalising prospect of an unknown MI film, Dead Reckoning Part II, hidden in a time capsule somewhere.
The penultimate film got some negative press as it was filmed in lockdown and some critics said it showed, so that was one reason I didn't see it when it came out, that and I'd have liked to see it at the Waterloo Imax but that can set you back £30, then with a train fare and a stop at Pret, you're talking £50-£60 easy. I think Kevin Mahler of the Times was disparaging but he tends to be about everything.
I liked it a lot, more than just about all the MI films, for me it evoked happy memories of the latter Roger Moore Bonds. I can find hardly anything bad to say about it, if I do it's just nitpicking.
From the very first, the MI films tended to outBond Bond, I mean I can dip into GoldenEye when it's on telly but I didn't much like it at the time and I still don't as a movie... bits of it I like whereas the first Mission Impossible, released subsequently, was Brian DePalma, had some great scenes in it, all nicely thought out, again it seems to utilise British set pieces - the Channel Tunnel - in a way that the Bonds don't bother to do. Likewise, MI2 pilfered the sexy car chase between Bond and the femme fatale from GE and imo just made it better, MI3 did the freeing of Sanchez in LTK only, again, it's the full big budget experience, it's done better whereas the Bonds used to pilfer from other movies and do it better, now they are getting magpied. What we see in this one is that stuff that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny tried to do (where whole scenes, such as the Tut chase or deep diving for treasure only to hand it to the waiting villains) mimic Bond) but this MI does it better, DOD had just too grim a flavour. It's a trap these films fall into - as if to say, hey, okay this is yet another movie but hold tight because we're going to put some grim, nasty stuff in to show you have to take it seriously. The lightness, the flightiness isn't there.
So with this one, well, if you thought the car chase in Rome in Spectre was oddly devoid of traffic, well, Dead Reckoning puts that right in a way that makes you think, what happened, did EON/MGM not have the money to bribe someone here? Barbara Broccoli suggested that money was an issue under the recent studios and if so I am very glad it's with Amazon now because sometimes it just comes down to budget. Never with an MI action scene do I think it's been done half-arsed or could have been bettered. They deliver.
The Rome chase scene also borrows from TND in that the escaping pair are handcuffed, and also from FYEO in that the car they have to make do with is a yellow tin pot thing. It even seems to troll Spectre in that Cruise's Hunt is presented with a flash Aston Martin type car but no, realises he has to take the other one, as if to say, hey, you had Bond in that flash car (and the joke was it's gadgets didn't work) but we can put our hero in the rickety kind of rubbish that shows up in Spectre in a comic moment, and still make it better.
It helps that the MI films know their brief, know to lean knowingly into the comedy of the thing, so the action can work. One snag with the post Brosnan Bonds is that they have a different director each time so Bond's world, and his reality, changes also. This happened only once before, from TB to LALD, and certainly those films feel a bit odd in relation to each other (and that's not including CR 67). The action in the recent MI films is not Marvel territory but it's not Bourne either, it isn't realistic but you don't feel it because the film knows what it's trying to be whereas with recent Bonds, it feels like they have to reinvent the wheel a bit each time.
I suppose at the cinema I might have noticed that some scenes just end and Cruise is then somewhere else but on telly with a glass of wine, I didn't notice or care, I just went with it. It helps that the whole thing is always very simplistic in terms of plot, but again, oh I forgot, I mean the opening is a nod to stuff like The Hunt for Red October and of course The Spy Who Loved Me, the savage climax reminding us that the Russian submarine has been navigating under the Polar Ice Cap, it's done like the opening credits of a Bond film, but with meaning. The budget is important because Bond films like TND nodded to the past but didn't do anything much better and if you can't do the same thing again but bigger and better, you're into diminishing returns.
EDIT: The pre-credits is very long, I've never before seen a film where once the credits finish we go straight into a long overdue ad break.
Cruise does look old in this one, for the first time. Maybe Covid meant he couldn't get his usual work done. He looks better in the latest one, from what I've seen, though as an actor he has that Paul McCartney/Cliff Richard thing going on - short hair, Beatle Paul, long hair, it's Wings, short hair it's pre 65 and Summer Holiday, long hair it's Devil Woman, both looking totally different. That said, Cruise looks nothing like his depiction on the poster where he seems to be from his film The Firm, I mean Rog aged but they did make the posters reflect that. Talking of which, we could do with better posters for these films, maybe @emtiem could rustle up one?
The whole of this film just flowed and what I liked was it didn't try too hard, it didn't have discordant aspects that I've found In most other MI films trying to make it hurt. I think I switched off MI3 because I found Philip Seymour Hoffman's villain too horrible and the prospect of his wife's plight too grim. MI4 was Dubai wasn't it? I don't recall much else about it, was that the one in which the Kremlin blew up? The films have struggled with the silliness of the face mask thing and having it done too repetitively. Also how to explain Hunt's perennial single status, which it does but none too happily. The last one had great action scenes but I don't find Henry Cavill an easy screen presence, something about him I can't explain though in theory I like him. And some of these films, you do get the impression that the IMF is a pretty nasty organisation in the tricks it pulls on people. Then there's the one - or two - with Alec Baldwin, who now leaves a bad taste.
None of that here. Okay the McGuffin is amazingly crap, I mean if there are two keys and together they are dangerous, but you have in your possession one of them, then rather than try to find the other, you might just bin the one half you have to make it null and void, eh? We are meant to overlook that but watching on telly with a drink, I do. And there's a lot of pickpocketing going on that might tire in a cinema theatre but... Yes, there's exposition but I prefer that to movies where you really don't know what's going on and you suspect that's the point. One downside, the main villain here is a bit of a cypher, and not that menacing, and it does a bit of the retcon thing that Spectre did (don't borrow that, guys!) and also the Keaton-Nicolson Batman movie, But I did find the AI villain The Entity very timely, more so now than I would have done on its release I suspect (Grok is a scary bit of kit).
I may see the current one in cinemas but if some of the now redundant MI team can be signed up for Bond, we could be in for a treat and good riddance to the recent films. I know the Bonds do have a struggle to come up with new stuff - what charms in a non-Bond film is one thing but in an actual Bond film just gets the old 'oh, they're repeating themselves' line, while coming up with a new song each time, well, they haven't had any classics have they. And the MI has a very simple premise or McGuffin - it's 'we have to find this dangerous tool' or 'there's a traitor in our team' or 'they think I'm the traitor in the team' so it's one long chase scene after another, but it does work. I'm not sure it's easy to crowbar the Bond template into the modern video game styling.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Nice review. Funny and on point. If you like, @Napoleon Plural I'll diss W.H. Auden.... no, I'm lying, I wouldn't do that.
Roman Holiday (1954)
Supposedly charming black and white film about a young maybe teenage European princess from a nameless country (she speaks English but it's made clear she's not, then again its star Audrey Hepburn was from Holland wasn't she?) goes AWOL on a publicity trip to Rome. She runs into local American hack Gregory Peck who initially doesn't recognise her and lets her kip overnight at his rather lovely apartment with a view of the city... only in the morning when she's on the front pages - said to have had an illness and consigned to her bed while her protectors try to find her) does he twig and then he sets about getting a story out of it, prolonging their association.
Well, it is charming but the early stuff left a bad taste as Peck's leading man does seem on the make early on, and doesn't seem too charming either to be ready to leave her in a taxi with a driver to sleep it off, I mean okay it's Rome not Rotherham but even so.
In early scenes an out-of-it Hepburn resembles Grace Kelly's posh girl getting tipsy in High Society, which I think came later... edit, yes it did, it's 1956, then again, HS was a remake of The Philadelphia Story which I still haven't got round to seeing, so maybe she nicked it from her namesake's performance in that. That got me thinking, well, wouldn't Sinatra be a better fit for the US journalist than Peck? He plays a similar role in High Society and does it well, he could do the comedy better and make the sneaky go-getting less horrible somehow. And given his Italian heritage, it might make more sense to have him as a jobbing hack in Rome? Or was that played down at that time? Perhaps we'd expect him to sing 'Three Coins in the Fountain'. Then again, I'm not sure Sinatra could have pulled off the scene were se falls for Hepburn's princess, did he ever that kind of truly romantic scene? I'm trying to think. like Connery in his films I'm not sure he ever really gave himself over to a woman, or got past that sexual banter phase. And at any rate we are spared dismal tales of whether Sinatra tried to cop off with Hepburn behind the scenes, or whether they got on at all.
The scenery - it's all shot in Rome, the film boasts in the opening credits - is very lovely. Hepburn in her main debut, for which she won an Oscar, is very good though very like other roles in My Fair Lady where she goes on to impersonate an aristocrat. It's hard to watch it and not think of Princess Diana, that said I guess the whole thing was modelled on Princess Elizabeth... will have to look at the dates to see if she'd been made Queen by that point. Edit, yes she was made Queen in 1952. Roman Holiday is not bogged down by extraneous players, like what her parents think of her going missing, or any emotional distress behind the scenes... It's not Summer Holiday where Cliff unknowingly absconds with a millionaire's daughter mascerading as a boy and her parents go in pursuit.
All roads lead to Cliff don't they.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
David Zaritsky's take on Final Reckoning and what the Bond movies can learn from it. I don't agree with everything he says, but he has many good points and the Bond movies can learn important lessons from MI:
FANTASTIC VOYAGE (1966)
Stephen Boyd stars alongside Raquel Welch in a good looking science fiction nonsense that succeeds despite its many anatomical and physical plot holes. The best science fiction attempts to blend science fact with a thrilling story, this one merely has a thrilling story. Aided by some excellent [for the day] photography, special effects, design and sound, Richard Fleischer’s two hours of bodily hokum passes by in a whirl and features plenty of amusing fun and games among the occasional tensions and over indulgent sermonising.
Dr Jan Benes has been abducted from an unnamed foreign power, but enemy agents intercept his cortege and following a car crash he is put into an induced coma while surgeons operate on a blood clot on his brain. To do this, and do this quickly, Boyd, Welch, Donald Pleasance, Arthur Kennedy and William Redfield are placed in a submersible and shrunk to the size of an atom before being injected into Benes’s bloodstream. The aim is to operate from inside the body and laser blast the blood clot to oblivion. Naturally the hazardous journey through a man’s body is fraught with known and unknown danger, including a fused fistula, a trip through the man’s heart and an attack of white blood cells. There’s even a traitor on board!
Action galore and a whole load of baloney, but thoroughly enjoyable, tense when it matters and played so straight you could almost believe it was true. In a great era of forward thinking sci-fi, Fantastic Voyage stands out as one of the more bizarre, but also one of the most successful movies. If you haven’t seen it, suspend your disbelief for a couple of hours and watch Miss Welch get stalked by fluffy cotton special effects.
Very good, if occasionally unintentionally silly.
By 20th Century Fox - http://www.impawards.com/1966/fantastic_voyage.html, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8913363
Note 1:
Isaac Asimov wrote the novelisation and wrote it so fast the book appeared before the film was released, so many mistakenly thought the film was based on Asimov’s writings. He spent time correcting many of the screenplay’s scientific errors, although he considered the central shrinking premise to be impossible.
By First edition, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69432969
Note 2:
The Classic Series Dr Who story The Invisible Enemy spends the whole of episode three re-enacting the basic idea of Fantastic Voyage.
Fantastic Voyage is a um… fantastic film. From the first time I saw it in the cinema aged 10 in 1966 I’ve loved watching this every few years.
THINGS TO COME (1936)
H.G. Wells’s novel is adapted for the big screen by Alexander Korda. Huge sets and expensive special effects just about make it watchable today, but the film is overly optimistic, naïve and rather dull. A decades long world war plunges the whole of human civilisation towards the brink of extinction. The harrowing nature of war is well portrayed, mixing First World War trench warfare images with air bombing imaginations. Watching those scenes now feels prescient of the looming Second World War. Things to Come indeed…
The city of Everytown – an SFX version of London – is wiped out. Interest switches to Ralph Richardson’s warlord dictator, a man forming his kingdom from the ashes and dust of chaos, war and plague. He’s thwarted by an idealised faction calling themselves Wings Over The World, who are building great cities in the Middle East. Mankind recovers but peace brings a new kind of dictatorship and the relentless pursuit of progress itself becomes a contentious issue. Revolution stalks the future.
Superb city designs are let down by having everyone look as if they just escaped from Korda’s aborted I Claudius – togas and sandals abound. William Cameron Menzies is a solid choice of director, uninteresting visually and dull with actors. The stage school theatre accents don’t aid authenticity – where are all the working class men and women? Britain’s belated answer to Metropolis, but not a patch on it. Ambitious, but flawed.
ASSASSIN (2015)
Danny Dyer’s working class assassin falls for the daughter of a man he has just killed. She’s a stripper in a dingy London clip joint. He works for the Albert Brothers, two shady businessmen with a criminal past. They are played with some menace by Martin and Gary Kemp, a riff on their earlier roles as the Kray Twins. Love doesn’t run smooth for gangster types and things naturally take a turn for the worse. It is all a bit simplistic and sleazy and doesn’t last very long. The movie effectively ended Dyer’s acting career. He is now big in reality TV. Dyer was never a great actor, but he channels his inner Jason Statham for a role of much restraint but powerful inner turmoil and seething anger. Pity the decent(ish) performance doesn’t have a decent(ish) story to support it. Holly Weston, who was big in soap opera Hollyoaks, plays the pretty love interest.
DEMONS OF THE MIND (1972)
An unusual late period Hammer horror that seems more concerned with insomnia, insanity, incest, impotence and the early days of psychoanalysis than it is with the psychopathic tendencies of its villainous protagonists. Robert Hardy is miscast as Baron Zorn, a man convinced his inability to sleep with his wife, following a horrific virginal wedding night and her supposed nymphomania, led to her suicide. The Baron believes his children have inherited his blood lust, has shut them away from the world leading to their sibling affair. Disgusted, he has begun to bleed them, hoping to release the evil but only leading to anaemia and a mental breakdown for the son. The daughter briefly escaped the locked doors of his castle, but a wild romance with Paul Jones’s medical student has only led to her recapture and more incarceration. Which is where we join the story…
Enter Patrick Magee’s mesmerist, who determines to ‘cure’ the teenagers but instead uncovers the truth behind the Baron’s family secrets. Meanwhile Micheal Hordern’s crazed priest incites the villagers to excise the demon from their estate, convinced it is the Baron’s cabal who are killing the local girls. All paths lead to death, destruction, blood, burning crosses and naked women. Nice.
Demons of the Mind touches on too many subjects to be successful and the final revelation is muddled. If anything it behaves more like one of the short-lived ‘folk horror’ cycle of the era, what with its focus on the psychological makeup of its murderers, as well as the pseudo-religious angle provided by the priest and the pagan rites of the villagers. Along with Captain Kronos, Twins of Evil and To the Devil a Daughter, the film stands as an attempt to alter the output of Hammer films into something more substantial than mere vampires and mummies. It doesn’t quite work, but it is a brave attempt. Arthur Grant’s photography illuminates the interiors brilliantly [the movie was shot on location at Bolney Castle] but there’s nowt he can do with all that dreadful moneysaving day-for-night shooting. Peter Sykes directs adequately.
WHITE ZOMBIE (1932)
You might suppose from the title that this film would be racist, and you'd be right. It's also classist and sexist, and no doubt a few more "ists" that I haven't picked up on. We follow a standard film horror plot of a young couple whose honeymoon turns out to be not what they have bargained for, especially when they run into a man called (I kid thee not) Murder Legendre played by the one and only Bela Lugosi.
You don't think he's the villain, do you? Some scenes from this were used in Tim Burton's "Ed Wood" biopic. The film creaks at the seams and really is only for film historians (and there are better films from that period) or Lugosi fans, like me.
CURSE OF THE FLY (Don Sharp) 1966
Third in the original "Fly" series, and it takes a complete step away from its predecessors but still looks at the possible horrible effects of teleportation. Some good shock moments. It stars Brian Donlevy (Quatermass) and our own George Baker (Sir Hilary Bray in OHMSS, Captain Benson in TSWLM) with our own Burt Kwouk (Mr Ling in GF, No 3 in YOLT) in a supporting role. Pretty good as these things go.
THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)
While everyone’s been wittering on about the toothsome Tom Cruise and his MI stunt-fest, the Bank Holiday weekend in the UK saw a brief Jason Bourne Season, brief because the fifth film wasn’t included in the schedules. I have the five films in a box set, but my Dad wanted to watch this and there was bugger all on the telly that Friday night.
Doug Liman is an unusual director to find helming an action thriller. It is worth noting that while The Bourne Identity does contain vicious and spectacular action it is mostly a thoughtful, thought-provoking and intelligent dialogue driven thriller that prefers suspense and intrigue to gunbattles and fistfights. They are there, of course, but they do not take centre stage. Instead, Matt Damon’s American assassin Jason Bourne embarks on a relationship of mutual need with Franka Potente’s German drifter Marie Kreutz, and it is how these two lonely hearts interact across the spectrum of violence, death and pursuit that draws an audience into the narrative and provides a story of much depth and character, assets one would expect from indie director Liman, a man for whom personalities are more important that process.
Hence, The Bourne Identity has a simplistic jigsaw puzzle feel to it. Liman isn’t interested in the rough, tough action or the American [read CIA] foreign policy, he’s looking at the people and the way they interact. So while Damon and Potente embark on a furtive love affair among the hooded streets of Paris, avoiding bullets and knives and hotel concierges with maximum efficiency, we have a counter affair breaking down at Treadstone Headquarters as top boss Ward Abbott [a grizzling Brian Cox] and his secret underling Alexander Conklin [a harassed Chris Cooper] attempt to pull rogue agent Jason Bourne back into the fold. Their spiky friendship ends in eventual dismissal. Cooper becomes more and more a desperate man the longer his hunt for Bourne continues and continues unsuccessfully. He shouts and sweats and frowns, he even takes out his wrath on poor Nicky Parsons – a hopelessly underused and seemingly miscast Julia Stiles – who is holding up the Paris end of the Treadstone organisation. This shadowy bureau within a bureau has been set up specifically as an assassination unit, packed full of highly trained and indoctrinated agents, a reverse of those Chinese sleepers in The Manchurian Candidate, who at a moment’s notice will design and carry out a notified kill. We witness other agents separating themselves from their day jobs and their families. This draws the audience away from the fun and silliness of the cinematic spy game and into the realities of espionage, that it occurs around us and without our knowledge. In fact, Jason Bourne’s journey is exactly ours: he is suffering from retrograde amnesia and pieces the puzzle of his life together at exactly the same moments that we do [although the Treadstone scenes offer us more background than he gains]. Again, Liman, as director and script supervisor essentially recognises that Bourne’s predicament must resonate with the audience to allow sympathy to build.
To that end they provide one of the finest openings to a thriller movie in cinema history: the crew of Mediterranean fishing vessel rescue an unconscious man from the waves, he has been shot and the only identity he carries is an inch long chrome battery sewn into his hip, a device whose torch beam projects the details of a Zurich bank account. As the rescued man travels to Zurich, discovers a cask of money, guns, passports and equipment in the sealed deposit box, he becomes as confused and concerned as we are. That he keeps speaking automatically in foreign tongues and acting violently against his natural instincts point us to the future that will unravel. Meanwhile pretty Marie can’t get her work permit and risks being thrown out of Switzerland. Bourne offers her $10000 to drive him to Paris. She needs the money; he knows it; she knows it. The scene where he persuades her, cautiously, carefully, yet convincingly is the moment we, and Bourne, also recognise he has tact and an empathetic ear. It is these tendencies that enable us to accept the premise that Marie assist Bourne during his detective hunt, even after the twosome are attacked by a machine gun and dagger wielding assassin. At this moment, their subsequent passionate coupling seems more akin to catharsis than actual desire, but you sense in Damon’s and Potente’s deliberately awkward performances their attraction building; there is as much intrigue for them to find in each other as there is for the audience. Meanwhile, Conklin is going crazy at Treadstone as Bourne thwarts one attempt after another to be brought in or eliminated.
Robert Ludlum’s spy novel was a huge success in 1980. Screenwriter Tony Gilroy jettisons most of the text because it concerned the hunt for Carlos the Jackal, a real life killer who was solidly behind bars in 2002. Gilroy retained the opening sequences and the overarching assassination organisation, there named the Treadstone 71 Corporation. Although Ludlum’s novel includes some action, like the director it was the evolving relationships which most interested him. Hence, Gilroy takes those moments as his potentates. We witness Maria providing sensible assistance to Bourne, while he does all the spy-craft, not always when necessary. Several times he attempts to persuade her to escape, considering she is safer without him, but she refuses to obey, even appearing at times to enjoy the subterfuge – until the twosome are tracked to a remote farmhouse and the jeopardy of her situation, how it endangers even unconcerned people from her past, is revealed in stark butchery and death. There is a brilliant sequence where Bourne watches over two children, contemplating his and their future; this is significant as it is later revealed Bourne fled his last mission due to the presence of children at the scene. So, his conscience was clicking into gear even as the rotaries of Treadstone tried to control his actions.
The film is punctuated by a quintet of exceptional action sequences: a tight, taut escape from the US Embassy; the gritty, bloody assassin’s fight; a Paris car chase of much jollity and gripping tension; the tracker-style, western-movie, farmhouse gunbattle; and the slam-bang Paris climax where Bourne confronts Conklin. Each of these is fantastically well edited, sharp, incisive and keen as a whippet. The stylised swift intercutting of the film would become a standard for action thrillers in the years to come, so-much-so even James Bond, who tended always to walk his own walk, was accused of fey imitation when Quantum of Solace premiered in 2008. Saar Klein should take many plaudits for his scissor-work, and not only during the violent scenes; the rapid, slightly dysfunctional editing creeps into the everyday, lending a fractured emotional pull to the personal narratives director Doug Liman is creating. The Treadstone HQ scenes thus become as intimately suspenseful as those in Paris and Zurich. Oliver Wood photographs the rough and the smooth with an eye for detail and roaming assuredness: we miss nothing: everything of importance is on show, in focus, front and centre. One might suggest this makes the film unoriginal, but in an era when moviemakers prefer to hide their truths, to be so obvious was and still is refreshing and successful. Liman handles his characters with alternating hard and soft hands depending on which side of the pond they are sitting. He wisely delegated most of the action to his second unit crew. The music comes courtesy of John Powell and is mostly non-orchestral, a thumping, driving, techno score of much aplomb, benefitted by Moby and Paul Oakenfold contributing dance tracks of energy and resonance. Even the closing credits, which resemble a computer motherboard, are intriguing. The film, despite being American funded and focussed, has a curiously European vibe to it, the understated nature of its episodes and protagonists hinting at the same wily ghouls, errant strangers and bitter confrontations, secrets and lies found in Vienna for The Third Man or Berlin for The Spy Who Came in From the Cold. Like those films, based in real locations and dealing with real time problems wide and small, Jason Bourne’s slightly more fantastical narrative clings effortlessly to the idea it just might all be genuine.
The Bourne Identity was released in the summer of 2002 to great acclaim. It spawned four sequels and remains a thunderously good spy thriller which I can watch over again without any lessening of enjoyment. I still remember how breathless I felt watching it one evening at the Sutton Empire, on my own I recall because of a general antithesis in the friendship group towards Matt Damon. Never understood that. When I left, I felt this was the James Bond movie I wanted to see: character, story and action combining in a flurry of tension and excitement, underscored by a believable and contemporary plot. What did I get that winter? Die Another Day. In some ways, the Bond franchise never recovered from the contrast, it tried to imitate, then it chose arthouse glamour and gloomy visuals as a substitute for personality. One thing The Bourne Identity and its descendants has in spades is a central personality-personalities, not only in the multidimensional characters, which help an audience empathise and root for or against them, but in the cinematic presentation, the fashionable zippy surface glamour mixing with grim and grimy determination, a reality of possibilities which oozes confidence and subtlety while never neglecting the central core of entertainment.
Absolutely superb.
I saw White Zombie again a couple of months ago after a gap of probably over 40 years. I was hoping that I had missed things then that I appreciate more in old age but unfortunately it still remains a stilted dull affair.
Curse Of The Fly is underrated. I like the original Fly trilogy more than the modern 2-movie remakes.
@chrisno1
THE BOURNE IDENTITY (2002)
An excellent review of a good, solid well written film 🍸
IDENTITY, SUPREMACY, and ULTIMATUM make for a pretty darned great action/spy/thriller trilogy. I also liked LEGACY for what it was: a standalone adventure. The fifth one, JASON BOURNE, is a middling effort that feels like a cash grab rather than a fully formed film.
Thank you @Sir Miles - I didn't spend so long over this one:
THE BOURNE SUPREMACY (2004)
An above average sequel thriller that both retreads familiar ground seen in the first film and continues that story’s narrative effectively. In The Bourne Supremacy Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne has found a semblance of an existence living with Franka Potente’s Marie Kreutz in Goa, India. When an assassin attempts to eliminate him, Bourne believes Treadstone has been reactivated. Cue more tension, pursuit and death around Europe, culminating in a slam-bang-thank-you-ma’am car chase through Moscow.
Brian Cox’s Ward Abbott returns to embody office boy villainy at its oldest, decayed and most decrepitly corrupt. Joan Allen brings some decency to proceedings as incorruptible CIA headsman Pamela Landy. Moments of pithy humour save Tony Gilroy’s script from being a grim fest all-round. It isn’t as startling as The Bourne Identity, chiefly because the revelations are not new, but it pulls the strings when it needs to and director Paul Greengrass keeps a short rein on the actors and a long rein the action. Sharp editing makes it a tough watch; you really need to concentrate. The handheld camera work doesn’t help either, the film is very jumpy. Viewed twenty years on, the freewheeling style doesn’t seem anywhere near as annoying as it did in 2004. That’s a credit to the Bourne Cycle, demonstrating just how influential they have been on the cinematic presentation of suspense, intrigue and violence.
As it happens, Supremacy is a curiously low-key film in the violence stakes, but a rewarding couple of hour’s entertainment nonetheless whose exposition in clever enough to not reveal any hidden plot holes.
As sequels go, very fine indeed.
Can’t disagree with any of that @chrisno1 they are two very fine films indeed 🍸
Can't wait to hear what you think of ULTIMATUM. I think SUPREMACY may be my favorite of the trilogy but ULTIMATUM has the best overall fight/action scene.
Also, I think Paul Greengrass was the overall 'best' director for delivering handheld camera action scenes. For many directors, handheld camera sequences come off as chaotic messes without any flow. For Greengrass and his editors, they make it all work and actually flow.
THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM (2007)
While The Bourne Ultimatum shares its title with Robert Ludlum’s third Bourne novel, like its predecessor The Bourne Supremacy, the film is a completely original adventure. Writers Tony Gilroy, Scott Burns & George Nolfi, director Paul Greengrass and overseeing exec Doug Liman revive the story of Jason Bourne by continuing in the well-trod vein of the previous movies. Bourne’s memory is gradually returning, but despite attempts to contact people from his past, he only experiences brutal flashbacks. When a CIA director gets cold feet over the new Treadstone project – named Black Briar – and sells the story to Paddy Considine’s British newspaperman, Bourne jets off to wintery London to uncover more of his life from journalist Simon Ross. Thus, Bourne sets in motion a series of rushed assassinations, chases and fights as the CIA director in charge of Black Briar seeks to bring him down.
This bunch of high velocity villains is played by Davd Strathairn, Scott Glenn and Edgar Ramirez. Albert Finney crops up as a psychoanalyst overseeing the assassination training program. This particular casting made me raise an eyebrow. I had completely forgotten Finney was in Ultimatum – was this, I wonder, why the Bond producers cast him in Skyfall? To stick a thumb up at the US producers of their closest ever cinematic competitor and say: “We can use him better than you can?” [Neither franchise utilised Finney very well, IMO.] Thing is, it stinks more of a desperate move to imitate; even though the roles are dramatically different, to bring in a monumental star, a man whose acting ability trounces almost everybody on the set, boosts the gravitas of the movie. The Bond franchise seemed to use him for mild humour; here, Finney is all calm, controlled menace. Meanwhile, Joan Allen’s Pamela Landy is drawn back into the fray as a stooge for the Agency’s uncontrollable killing assets. Matt Damon remains as bleakly unemotional as Finney in playing the titular Bourne. He has some cute scenes with Julia Stiles, who returns as Nicky Parsons, the nervy foreign attaché who, it turns out, once had an affair with him – Bourne’s amnesia is clearly critical if he forgets making love to the lovely Julia Stiles… Still, ho-hum…
Chase follows fight follows chase; there is a fantastic piece of filming in and around Waterloo Station, London, as Bourne contacts and tries to protect Simon Ross while the CIA prowls the concourse hunting them down. Tense isn’t half the word. Unfortunately, the film therefore has frontloaded its own assets and afterwards the action becomes repetitive and can’t touch the heights reached in London. Similar situations in Tangiers and New York only result in similar confusion and death. There is a neat scene midmovie where the end of the previous episode is replayed, upsetting the belief all we saw in Supremacy takes place before Ultimatum.
One can’t fault the product in the visual creative spheres. It is phenomenally well constructed and individually not a single scene disappoints. It is only when taken as a whole that the movie seems to lurch a bit, staggering from one pulsating punch or crunching car crash to another. There is just about time to draw breath before the next sequence is upon us. Much like Supremacy, and only a little like Identity, the editing is swifter than a hare at the races and you need to concentrate harder than Mesmer to keep up with the twisting, fragmented plotting. The only issue I had with the narrative was its too fast timeline. The early thread about the newspaper article would take days or weeks to reach publication, but the writers have it hitting The Guardian front pages in hours. People travel between countries and get tracked around cities so fast you do wonder if it is technologically possible in real time to do this. [Is there a techy expert out there who can confirm or deny whether the kind of close surveillance shown at the Black Briar HQ is genuinely possible?] Oddly, it seems convenient that Bourne travels around the world without being tracked by the CIA when everyone else is picked up like a firefly in the dark.
Still, I am only nit-picking.
The Bourne Ultimatum effectively finishes the trilogy, even if the ending is as open-ended as you can possibly get. It’s a very good thriller, pacy and dramatic with a ton of suspense, especially early on. The notion even a nation’s security services are both fallible and corrupt isn’t new, but it feels new. Great propelling music [again] from John Powell.
The Morocco fight in ULTIMATUM is amazing. There are many great fights in the franchise but that one really sticks out for the incredible camera work and the overall execution.
I had to dip into the DVD collection to watch this one:
THE BOURNE LEGACY (2012)
An excellent fourth instalment of the Jason Bourne Series departs from its main subject – and from Erik Van Lustbader’s novel of the same name – and pitches a parallel story to The Bourne Ultimatum. As the CIA bigwigs get spooked by Bourne’s continued presence and the ‘threat’ he poses by exposing their assassination programs, Edward Norton’s steely Eric Byer is tasked with overseeing the closure of all such secret projects: Treadstone, Black Briar, Larx and Outcome. Unknown to Byer, an Outcome agent, Jeremy Renner’s Aaron Cross, escaped his execution in the Alaskan wilderness and is out hunting, not for revenge, but for the chemical medications that keep his brain functioning super efficiently and his body in peak physical condition.
Outcome and Treadstone were run hand in hand at the sophisticated medical research laboratory managed by the Sterisyn Morlanta Corporation in upstate New York. There, Rachel Weisz’s nervous virologist Dr Marta Shearing narrowly escapes her own murder, but needs Cross’s sudden appearance to prevent a return attempt by a D-phase CIA unit. On the run, the two form an uneasy partnership, Cross performing all the natty espionage craft and violent rescue, Shearling providing the scientific brains, as well as a barometer of the audience’s emotions – I mean, crikey, how would you feel if all your close colleagues are wiped out in the lab one day and the next afternoon four CIA stooges start ripping your house to shreds? Weisz gives the role everything she’s got and is mightily convincing. Renner too manages to bring moments of humanity to a blank killing machine. His scenes with an uncommunicative fellow agent [Oscar Isaac] in an Alaskan log cabin have real power and pathos. These are men with personal histories, but they have been indoctrinated to forget, ignore and avoid those people, emotions and loyalties. The nation and the program is all that matters. Cross and his ilk are genetic mutations, similar to the kind of ‘superhuman’ the East German’s created by pumping athletes with steroids. What the Outcome program hasn’t managed to do is to eliminate the sympathetic instinct. That seems to have been naturally developed out by the bloodthirsty and single minded overseers of these programs, as well as driven, robotic, militaristic fire fighters like Eric Byer.
From a mountainous snowy retreat where drone missiles rain death, through a taut showdown in Marta’s backwoods house, to the heat and hustling streets of Manilla, crosscut with scenes of anxiety, intrusion and argument at CIA HQ, the action is skilfully wrapped up by writer-director Tony Gilroy. Gilroy also wrote the first three films in the series, so he has a heads-up about how to present both info and incident. The flashbacks and flash forwards are expertly used to fill in the blanks of the story here, as well as answering questions raised by the Bourne specific episodes. The film looks great. The support performances have a pointed urgency to them often missing in film’s such as this. The editing, as you would now expect, is fast and furiously sharp. Legacy perhaps lacks the tightening tender hooks of tension we saw under Greengrass and Liman’s work, but still does a fine job of gathering suspense and speed. If the final chase feels a mite long winded, there is a least a satisfying coda that leaves all doors open to more sequels.
A hefty round of applause.