The Bourne UltimatumI went and saw The Bourne Ultimatum last night. It's the third in a series, I haven't seen the first two so I went in with no preconceptions. I don't know what the hell I saw. I think that I would have had a more enjoyable time at a Young Liberals convention. Hate is a word that is bandied about a lot on the Internet, but this time it is deserved. I hated this film. If I see that Ben Affleck guy in the street, or whoever it was that played Bourne, I'm going to punch him in the neck.
Here's a modest list of things that would have made The Bourne Ultimatum an agreeable film.
This is a tripod, please use it. I swear that there is not one still frame in the film's 111 minute length. The handheld camera has its place, for example in investigative documentaries and Today Tonight dole scammer chases, not in panoramic or narrative scenes. OK, I get it, this film is "edgy" and "extreme". My stomach was "churning". The handheld cameras were a very cheap director's trick and it showed.
A close up involves one head. One head, that's all. You can't get it wrong. Even my grandmother got most of peoples heads in frame when she took holiday photos. The Bourne Ultimatum demands that the majority of close ups include only half of the speaker's head, and half of the back of the head of the listener. Half of the screen in almost every close up is taken up with someone's out of focus hair. It's not artistic, it's stupid.
Speaking of close ups, every second shot ended in an unnecessary zoom in. Bourne opens a letter - zoom in. Bourne pats a puppy - zoom in. I would have shaken my fist if my hands weren't holding my head up.
In the first five minutes, the movie went from Moscow to Paris to Langley to London. Seriously. Those first two places added nothing to the wafer-thin plot. It didn't stop there, the movie went to at least three more places after that, four if you count my contempt. Foreign places might impress your average mouthbreathing studio executive, but this movie's plot could have been more thoroughly fleshed out in the Woolies carpark.
For the fraction of the audience that hadn't yet succumbed to epileptic fits from the deliberately shaky camera work, this film offered not one, but two car chases. The first was stolen from Tomorrow Never Dies, the second from The Blues Brothers. Bourne was involved in two horrific car accidents, walking away unscathed both times against my wishes.
No boobs though. Indiscriminate killings are OK, but no raunchiness.
The faggotry didn't end when the credits started rolling. What song would you pick to end a fast-paced explosionfest like The Bourne Ultimatum? If you chose a Moby song, then Universal Pictures wants you! I'm sure that our favourite vegan pansy wimp would choke on his tofu if he knew that his cookie-cutter art was being used to cap off someone else's cookie-cutter art.
It became obvious that this would be no Citizen Kane within the first few minutes, but that doesn't excuse The Bourne Ultimatum for having no plot or story direction. After sitting through this tripe I'm still no closer to knowing what the 'ultimatum' mentioned in the title actually was. I'm giving The Bourne Ultimatum half a wiffle ball, because it ended when the ticket said it would.
I'm going to go and sit down.
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Heyy I have a great idea. Why don't you start watching a program such as LOST, just in time for the season finale and then claim that you don't understand what the hype is all about. Or you could just watch the final installment of a brilliant trilogy without watching the first two, then make unqualified judgements about it. Awesome idea.
so my friends kept telling me about this really cute baby they had, so i come over to their house and it's turned 14 and is really ugly
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