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It’s a promising premise that gradually feels like it’s segueing into gritty Euro thriller territory, a mature version of Taken (2008), but sadly doesn’t. We have a barely interesting character study by the end and the decisions the lad makes don’t appear logical (or believable).
I almost wished it to descend into mindless bone-crunching mayhem. Just for the ‘lolz’.
It was not meant to be.
I saw this in a hotel room once, but I don’t know when or where, only recalling it was okay.
And it is.
Terence Stamp is in it and he is just wonderful. As he is in everything.
I’ve said on countless occasions to anyone and no one that the Bourne films easily supplant the modern Bonds in terms of a ‘hyper-realism’ because they are the right spy for this era – dodgy government agencies who are an extension of those governments, expendable employees prone to paranoia and literal identity crisis, a globalised landscape with overlapping institutions all out to screw you/each other.
In recent pictures, i.e., the Daniel Craig shit-bombs, Bond has essentially imitated Bourne, jettisoning some of the more ludicrous gadgets of the later Pierce Brosnan entries and going back to basics. Unfortunately, the filmmakers have missed the point and also lost the plot. Bond is Bond. Bourne is Bourne. Skyfall (2012) and the like are so schematic it’s embarrassing.
But enough about 007. What the Bourne movies did so well was capture that post-9/11 zeitgeist – expanded government powers, loss of individual freedoms for reasons of national security (or whatever), the sense that the rule of law is entirely flexible. They are also thrillingly unpredictable. You actually believe the carnage on display, and believe in the character and his mission to remember yet atone. It’s convincing.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) is the big one for me. It’s the dazzling city-hopping angle of it, the Berlin centrepiece, the unexpected death of a central character which is ruthless but entirely necessary in motivating the protagonist. And that bonkers Moscow car chase.
These movies are more than mere thrillers; they are as much about a bloke’s weary relation to his time and place as they are his mission objectives. Someone once described the pictures to me as ‘existential’.
I think I know what he meant.
Further reading/viewing:
https://orlandoinformer.com/blog/jason-bourne-stuntacular-story-explained/
I know absolutely zilch about cars – I cannot drive one, have never possessed and never will have any interest in them, and cannot fathom sharing the same road with so many dafties. I see a lot of these ‘boy racers’ congregating in supermarket car parks, revving their engines and taking selfies. The mind boggles. It’s one of the many reasons why I scratch my head at these Fast & Furious films. Utter shite. I just don’t understand the appeal.
This movie transcended the ‘car fetish thing’, however. Mainly because the topic is merely a foundation for broader themes and character dynamics. Ferrari here are the urbane, suave totem of Italian sophistication; Ford, the bog-standard symbol of production line Americana. And in another example of what we now call ‘globalism’, the Yanks want a bit of the prestige and to shake off the crass tag.
Christian Bale’s Ken Miles is an affront to the company men presided over by Tracy Letts’ Henry Ford II, the monolithic Ford Motor Company no institution in which to showcase one’s maverick inclinations, yet Miles finds a way through pure undiluted talent. It’s another absurd yet captivating Bale performance, the highlight of a movie in which nothing annoyed me even though it’s ostensibly about cars.
Well done.
Further reading/viewing:
https://time.com/5730536/ford-v-ferrari-true-story/
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ford-v-ferrari-movie-review-2019
In this decidedly odd (by common reckoning) picture, the disenfranchised, the dissatisfied, and the financially … fucked get themselves miniaturised – or ‘downsized’ – in order that they’ll be free to discover the sweet life they were previously denied by their limitations. It’s presented as a sine qua non; the only way for them to discover all the worldly pleasures (the American Dream?) is in an artificial community for modern-day Lilliputians.
There’s a lot to be said for a movie with both the materialist and the ecological at its forefront. We surely can’t expand forever, and with overpopulation and the ‘drain on resources’ we just might have to regress, the irony here being that the characters shrink yet conversely (in an almost alternate world) discover more than they would have before.
The utopia here is one inhabited by mostly entirely self-aware characters, but as this is a familiar tale, every new world becomes a microcosm of the former; people will be people. As the thug-philosopher Tony Soprano would maintain, there’s no geographical solution to an emotional problem.
The movie loses its way towards the end, with such a promising premise wasted on narrative detours and too many subplots. It is, however, quite the change from explosions and talking robots who morph into cars.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 