One of the great problems facing any film maker is when it comes to simulating
amateur film shots - all over the place, wibbly-wobbly vision in extremis.
After years of training, study and practice, honing their skills to perfection,
creating such a shot is not so much an art, but an anti-art, that a professional
cameraman just can't do it.But director, Peter Greengrass, managed to find one who could, and boy, do I
wish he hadn't. It felt like the entire film was shot in shakey-vision,
mind-numbing
after just a few minutes, and both distracting and depressing as it carried on
for the near full two hours of the film. I don't know if the steadicam operators
had to have their ankles broken or their gonads clamped in a vice to maintain
such consistent mind bending chaos on screen, but they were two things which I
would have liked to have done to them if they had sat next to me in the theatre.
Whirl, whirl whirl. That about sums up this bareably watchable film which had
almost nothing by way of plot and was a poor following to the initial offering.
In all seriousness, the closing titles were the best part, superbly rendered by
the Kaleidoscope Film Group.
Okay there were a couple of good car chases ( and pretty much little else bar
the cops turning up just minutes after they are called, and just a minute too
late ), but by then shakey-cam fatigue had set in and and nothing was enough to
cause any stir of emotion. Hey; the guy's driven into a wall ! Who cares; f--k
it.
And that about sums up the entire movie, except for two plot holes which are
staggeringly large ... Firstly, when your girlfriend drowns, it's customary to
drag her to the surface and not push her off downstream ( unless you've got
some sort of sweepstake going with your mates ), and resuscitation and CPR is
much more effective on land than under-water. We all know, as we've seen it
enough times on screen, that the first thing a drowned person does when their
life is spectacularly saved is to cough, splutter and take a gasp of air. Under
water, that could be a mighty long scene. Of course doing the right thing
doesn't leave the ambiguity of death, so Bourne's girlfriend can't be
miraculously rescued in time to appear in the final part of the trilogy -
Bourne Complacency anyone ?
Then we come to mobile phones. If all it takes to tap into someone else's
conversation is a cloned SIM card, then there's something incredibly faulty
with whatever network Naples has installed. But it was a good reminder that
every budding super-agent should carry at least one SIM copier around in their
pocket.
All in all, "Supremacy" is a matter for the Trading Standards Officers;
it was useless. It lacked originality and it lacked momentum except for
the very worst vomit inducing kind. What a way for a director to ruin what
could have been a superb follow-up to Identity. Instead of edge of
the seat stuff, as we travel alongside Bourne while he tries to thread recovered
memories back together, we have acres of boredom filled with nauseating camera
work.
A terrible waste, and a terrible waste of good ticket money. I'd have had just
as much fun sticking a camcorder to my car's dash, driving around ploughed
fields for two hours and watching the entire video later.
I'll admit that my end titles wouldn't have been as good. But who cares; f--k
it.
Bourne Again
There were three books in the series written by Robert Ludlum, and here's a
brief guide to what I expect to see in the final offering ...
Bourne, discovering his true identity and place of birth, returns to the town
where he was raised in the hope of finally putting all the pieces of his
shattered memory back together.
Unfortunately he falls foul of the local police chief who takes a dislike to
him. Caught unaware, Bourne is placed under arrest and taken back to the local
police station, but he makes a break for it, causing mayhem in the process.
As the police set off to recapture their man, Bourne goes 'native' and takes out
his pursuers one by one, eventually returning to the police station to take on
the police chief and the whole might of the US military who have been called in
to calm things down.
As the situation spirals out of control, his old operational handler is brought
back in and talks Bourne into putting down his weapons and coming back into the
fold of the intelligence community.
To avoid any confusion with any other film plot, Bourne steps into a fast car,
with a blanket thrown over his shoulder, and as he is driven off into the
distance to a thundering soundtrack, the camera pans and zooms in on
him ( shakily ) as he raises his hand through the car's window, and cries,
"Soylent Green is people ! It's made from people !".
