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Letters
Friday, August 3, 2007 12:00 AM

"The Bourne Ultimatum"

In this exhilarating action threequel, Jason Bourne emerges as the sort of troubled but resolute hero the world needs most.

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Saturday, August 4, 2007 06:07 PM

"Extreme Ways" by Moby

In case you are interested, that's the title of the song that starts the credit roll at the end of the Bourne Identity and the Bourne Supremacy.

It opens with the shrieking notes of synthesized violins rising like sirens, followed by a kick drum, bass and electric piano that takes you by surprise and sends you home from the theater in a weird groove.

If they do it again for "Ultimatum" it's going to get as familiar as the James Bond theme.

Saturday, August 4, 2007 08:56 AM

Can't figure out the reviewer

Stephanie Zacharek lost me completely when she gave a free pass to that abominable, empty turd "Ocean's 13" but nitpicked "Sicko," an accessible and well-done film on an extremely important subject.

Like one of the previous posters, I can't tell which way she comes down on this movie either. I must have missed the days when her reviews were more critical; the reviews on Salon have always seemed bland and far too forgiving for my taste. Roger Ebert is more critical!

Saturday, August 4, 2007 07:38 AM

Stutter cuts? Slowmo? How about something fresh for a change?

I'm bored watching both techniques. They're done to death. And please, can we have a funeral for the obligatory Car Chase?

I get the feeling that studios have a committee meeting where they focus group the 12 year-olds and cut the movie just for them. Plot? Motivation? We don't need no stinking plot or motivation, just keep the old fox and hound chase going for 160 minutes and we're outta here.

Funny thing is, Robert Ludlum wrote rich characters so that a smaller amount of action was necessary to keep you engaged and worried about them when danger threatens. But if the character is one-dimensional and simply another prop, then you've got to rely on one eye-popping stunt after another to hold interest.

The Bourne Identity had a delicious noir feel to it. I liked the overcast skies and cold European streets, mysterious and mesmerizing in itself. But New York? I don't know, maybe they should put the next Bourne Franchise in Las Vegas and car-chase through the casinos. And after that, they can have American cities bid on which one will host the next Bourne street race. Miami? Chicago?

Please Matt, make this your last one. Kill this thing now, before it gets as ridiculous as Rocky.

Saturday, August 4, 2007 06:22 AM

Films No One Sees!!??

I'll have you know, 'anonymous' (if that's your real name!) that our Serbo Croatian film festival next to the Salon office was a smashing success, all dozen of us attended! Our special guest speaker, Goran Visnjic, couldn't make it as he was being swabbed for DNA by a supposed baby-mama, but no matter! Oh, and the five hour movie that won the golden palm? Pure, pure genius! Only it was goat-herders, not dairy farmers! Roger Ebert: "I want to see this epic about Hungarian goat-herders again and again" circa 1963. It's on his list of Great Films!

Saturday, August 4, 2007 01:15 AM

Live Free or Die Hard was SOOOO Much Better

Matt Damon is a tremendous actor (especially in Ripley.) And the direction is phenomenal -- never a dull moment. But at least in Live Free or Die Hard they made it clear that tongue was firmly in cheek and so when Bruce Willis survives every explosion/fall from a building/fight and is just a little slowed down, you smile and go with it. Here, the hand-held cameras make the action seem so realistic that when Bourne manages to just get up time after time, it just makes you laugh at the movie and not with it.

Are there some excellent chases? Sure. But that's matched by the incredible amount of exposition being dropped left and right.

(SPOILER: The CIA chief says on the phone... "Remember why we brought her on this case. So we can blame it all on her when the time comes." Sheesh. It was like one of those bad sitcom pilots where a guy walks in and the female character says "Little brother, there you are." to explain the relationship between the characters for the audience. No one would say these things. Especially not a CIA chief trying to not get caught.)

Every time they went back to the CIA war-room or whatever you would call it (the Exposition Room?), it was all to explain what was happening, but in a cliched way.

Not a bad movie, but certainly a disappointment given the first two. (And didn't the second one end with Bourne in NYC? Does that mean we only get to that scene halfway through this one?)

Saturday, August 4, 2007 12:12 AM

Some great action sequences here

I hate action films, especially action sequences. Normally, they are ineptly made, random fragments stuck together with little concern about continuity.

This film is exactly the opposite. The cuts are lightning quick, so quick you can't even fully process the images you see, but that's no impediment. You just grab onto a distinctive sound or shape or color and take the ride. Everything is so meticulously crafted that everything is crystal clear. You never, not once, give up on a scene because you can't follow what's occuring.

These sequences are masterpieces and most assuredly find themselves placed along the great scenes of all time and dissected in film classes for years to come. They are nothing less than brilliant.

Friday, August 3, 2007 05:01 PM

They should have resurrected Franca Potente's Marie.

The Bourne Identity's love interest (Franca Potente) added so much depth to the first in the trilogy. Bourne had someone else, someone vulnerable to protect from evil.

I got the feeling The Bourne Supremacy producers must have listened to a focus group of NASCAR meatheads and replaced the tender interludes with long, repetitive car chases. As soon as the next predictable race-the-streets-of-Europe sequence begins, if you are sick of the cliche car chase genre, it's a great time for a rest room break and some fresh popcorn, knowing that the next six minutes of screen time will be nothing but 1/4 second jump cuts and lots of screeching tires and crunching metal.

I'm looking forward to the Ultimatum, even the ridiculous and obligatory car chase. That's a good time to take a pee and get some popcorn.

Friday, August 3, 2007 04:42 PM

@Mayor's Income

If you see Ultimatum, much of his struggle to deal with who he was, who he was turned into, and why, and who he is now, is what the movie is about.

As opposed to "Identity" and "Supremacy" -- which concentrated on Jason Bourne struggling to deal with who he was, who he's turned into and why, and who he is now. :)

At least James Bond knows who he is and who and what he's fighting for; Jason Bourne, fittingly, will likely never really know -- taking deniability to the next level!

The moral agency of Bourne's actions is another casualty of the forces that created him -- while Bond is comfortable doing dirty deeds for Queen and Country, Bourne's a mostly blank slate.

Bourne benefits from the knowledge he's gained on an operational level, but where Bond is suave, outwardly cultured and sophisticated -- an agent free to make choices and decisions, Bourne is kind of a killing machine on autopilot -- just put him in a situation and he reacts instinctively, or else he responds tactically to the needs of the moment. This creates still more deniability for him as a character -- he can't help himself, he's just been trained to be that way; he's Pavlov's Dog of Secret War.

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