"In order to keep your balance, you must keep moving." (Albert Einstein said that, sort of.)
And, for the most part, it does. As a member of its audience, you are up to your neck in pure intensity. It's not James Bond - spy heavy, filled with naked ladies - and it's not Mission Impossible, with heaps of running around and mahoosive explosions. No, it's more like the cleverest bits of both those movies - the twisty plots and cunning dialogue - injected with a tad bit of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy's magnificent sense of style. It's fast and furious, yes, but it's also packed with 'feelings' as well as stress. There's an uncontrollable sense of despiration right the way through. But, towards the end, that desperation is coming from us. We're desperate to go home and watch Celeb Big Bro.
Here's an important fact - this review is coming from some guy who's currently wearing a t-shirt that says 'all this could be yours' on it, which makes him look like a right dick. Another important fact is that this dick hasn't seen the first three movies, so what's being said here may or may not be completely invalid. What's true though, (at least, judging from what I've been told) is that this latest Bourne movie is moving off in a slightly different direction to it's predecessors. Which is great! It's a moment where the franchise lets a whole bunch of new folks jump on board and become fans if they enjoy what they see. The problem is that, although the majority of Aaron Cross' ordeal is quite an amazing ride, it's when we literally start riding that the director randomly decides to takes an unimaginably foul smelling turd on everything that comes before, and unfortunately it becomes all we're capable of remembering it for.
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| Jeremy wants you to get a job! And put something on the end of it! |
The characters and their exchanges, the soundtrack that delicately pumps away in the background, the believability of everything that's going on - it all works in the film's favour. Short cuts aren't taken. A car never turns invisible, for example, just because it's an action movie that revolves around spies, and betrayal and yet more spies. The technology is believable and even the techno-babble spouted out by Marta is, well - you can sort of follow it if you are paying enough attention. It doesn't try to be sexy either. God bless him, Jeremy Renner has a hot little body but the close ups don't really work out for him. And none of the ladies get their boobs out. It makes a real change. In between scenes we keep flipping back to a room filled with men who are either tubby or old, or both, as we see them piece together a complex puzzle of events and figure out where exactly on the face of the planet our leading man and his lady-friend are hiding out. The way in which they do this is fantastically real too because they have to work hard - there are no magical spy-film shortcuts. They slave away, researching, making calls, checking security cameras, gradually getting closer and closer until BAM - motorbike fucking mayhem.
The last 20-ish minutes (which feel a hell of a lot longer than 20-ish minutes) are unreal. As in, they are actually unreal. Wouldn't happen. And, the big finale suffers from a hideous cinematic ailment that, usually, only really crappy action movies have to deal with - it's called 'wobbly camera syndrome'. It's like Tony Gilroy ran out of movie, so decided to make a motorbike chase last as long as he possibly could, but then realised it made no sense whatsoever and shook up the footage so we couldn't make out whether or not it was just plain awful or worse. Characters at this point become invincible and develop a tendancy to perform embarrassing stunts, such as 'grinding' a motorbike down a hand rail. The entire sequence is very similar to a visual gag on Family Guy that's drawn out for an especially long time for maximum comic effect. The chicken fight springs to mind.
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| "What the fuck are we watching?" |
With that hideous chase scene done and out of the way, the film's vibe returns to normal - reverting back to trying to come across as 'suspicious' and 'clever' - but we don't buy it! It's spoiled everything! It's upsetting as every bit of action up until that wobbly motorbike-filled shit-fest is so damn good. Not too long, not too cheesy - sometimes darn right chilling. (A certain science lab shoot out is genuinely difficult to sit through.) Sometimes a few 'solutions' to sticky situations fall a bit flat because the trailer does a marvellous job of filling you in on all the details beforehand, but overall, pretty much faultless... until ol' Tony Gilroy forgets his meds.
Oh and, "there was never just one", you say? Yeah - brace yourself for two more Bournes!
★★★☆☆
Roo