Films

The Bourne Ultimatum [2007]

Director: Paul Greengrass
Actor: Matt Damon, David Strathairn, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles

The third in the Bourne series, and Jason Bourne (Damon) is has fully taken the fight to his former-employer, the CIA, who are still furiously pursuing him. He’s more determined than ever to find out who he is and ultimately, destroy Treadstone.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the previous two films, a short recap:

.: The Bourne Identity
In the Bourne Identity, Jason Bourne is found floating unconscious in the Mediterranean by a group of fishermen who rescue him. He doesn’t remember a thing, but with the few items on his person, most notably a small, nearly undetectable implant in his thigh with the access information to an anonymous Swiss bank account, he goes to find out who he is. What he finds is a small bank-vault full of different passports, money and a weapon, all belonging to him. He also discovers that he is capable of incredible physical feats, and has knowledge of weapons, tactics, evasion, espionage and counter-espionage. He just doesn’t know how he came to know all these things.

He meets Marie along the way, who decides to help him find out, and they fall in love. They find that Jason was a member of the ultra-secret Treadstone program, a CIA program of international assassination, where a handful of men were trained to be the most lethal and capable assassins on the planet. Behaviour modification, physical and mental disciplining, development of language, technical and combat skills; the works. When Jason is discovered by Treadstone, they try to take him in for “debriefing.” He resists and gets away and warns Treadstone not to come looking for him.

.: The Bourne Supremacy
In the following film, Jason and Marie are living together in Goa, India, and they keep a low profile, all the while Jason, who only remembers flashes and shards of his former life, tries to piece things together, unable to let go of his past. An assassin comes calling to take out Jason, but takes out Marie instead. Jason, mistakenly, thinks the assassin was sent by Treadstone, and goes to take his revenge. Along the way he gets caught up in an international scandal involving the Russians, and finds out that his first assignment in Treadstone was to kill a Russian diplomat. He retraces the steps of that mission, trying to rekindle the memory, and uncovers more and more dirt on Treadstone and the scandal. Pamela Landy, a hardball CIA director is trying to bring Jason Bourne in, or at least eliminate him because of the danger he poses, and continues to pose, to Treadstone. Jason finds out more about himself, evades Treadstone, exposes corrupt Treadstone officers, and takes down the Russian assassin and his employer, a Russian oil tycoon, finds the child of his first assignment’s victims and apologises. He promises Pamela Landy that if they don’t get off his back, he’s going to bring the fight to them.

.: The Bourne Ultimatum
Project Treadstone has been dismantled and rebuilt in the wake of 9/11 as project Blackbriar. It’s now an even deadlier assassination program that doesn’t need sanction from any politicians or higher ups. Within limits it does what it wants and covers up what it wants, all over the world, having highly trained assassins on retainer in virtually every country.

A British journalist catches wind of this project and finds an ex-Treadstone agent willing to talk about Jason Bourne, the man who started all of it, who was the prototype assassin that proved the project worked, and worked well. The assassin on which all other Treadstone and Blackbriar agents were measured against. He also finds that Jason Bourne has gone rogue, and he writes about it in the paper, trying to expose the CIA’s secret program. Jason reads about it, too, and decides to talk to the journalist, in the hope he can tell him more about who Jason is. (Obviously still struggling with remembering his past.) Meanwhile, Director Vossen, the head of Blackbriar is after the journalist to figure out who he’s been talking to, and gets Pamela Landy involved once they lose the journalist to Bourne.

Vossen is determined to eliminate Bourne, and in trying so crosses the line that Jason drew in the sand at the end of the previous film, and so Jason brings the fight to them, picking them apart agent by agent, trying to get to the ex-Treadstone agent who talked to the journalist. Meanwhile, he’s starting to remember more and more. Pamela Landy figures out that Vossen is abusing his authority, and tries to shut the program down, and gets unexpected help from Jason.

Great film. Great, great film. A really good ending to the trilogy, with a great opening for fans who are hungry for more. The acting is outstanding, of all involved, but especially Damon is king. To quote another review of this film I read; “he’s one of the best actors of his generation.” And I heartily agree.

Paul Greengrass is obviously a talented director. He managed to capture the hecticness of Jason’s flight, the pursuit and the difficult situations he gets himself involved in very well by using Shaky-Cam in The Bourne Supremacy. He took it to another level that was bordering on the annoying in The Bourne Ultimatum. In a sense, it was quite clever; the camera became more unstable the more confusing the situation, the more hectic the fight, or the faster Jason had to think to come up with solutions. But even in situations where he was having a normal conversation – like the diner conversation where Julia Stiles’ character is talking to Jason and she implies that they have a romantic past is slightly rocky and shaky. Perhaps that’s to indicate that Jason is never at rest, and always prepared for trouble, or perhaps it’s just fucking annoying. You choose.

I loved this film, as I loved the previous two films. It has the maturity, realism (sort of, let’s not get started on some of the absolute technical absurdities in the film), grit that James Bond films have lacked (until Casino Royale, and even that was a bit camp.) Jason would kick James’ ass.

Billy Elliot [2000]

Director: Stephen Daldry
Actor: Jamie Bell, Julie Walters, Gary Lewis, Jamie Draven

What a great film this is. So unconventional and refreshing. Billy is an eleven year old boy living in North England during the time where Margret Thatcher closes one coal-mine after the other, and money is tight. Billy lives with his father, older brother, and grandmother, and his mother has only recently passed away. Both Billy’s father and brother work at the local coal-mine, and have gone on strike in order to get better wages. Billy’s brother is one of the leaders of the strike, and dilligently stands at the gate to the mine hurling insults and threats to those who cross the picket line. Meanwhile, Billy goes to school and looks after his demented grandmother in the afternoon. On saturday he gets some money and his father’s boxing gloves and is sent off to boxing lessons. He’s not very good at it, and doesn’t enjoy it one bit, and slowly but surely his interest starts to deviate to the ballet-class that is being given in the same gym. He starts to go to ballet instead of boxing, hoping that nobody will find out, and turns out to be an amazingly talented dancer. His teacher, a middle-aged woman with problems of her own, decides to take Billy under her wing and teach him all she can, until she reaches a point where she believes Billy should attend the Royal Ballet School in London. She has to not only convince Billy that he can do it, but also his father and brother, who, at first, want to hear nothing about it, but slowly warm to the idea.

Incredible acting, great story, and a cast of gripping personalities. I highly recommend this film, even if you don’t normally like films like this.

Rang De Basanti [2006]

Director: Rakesh Omprakash Mehra
Actor: Aamir Khan, Siddharth, Sharman Joshi, Kunal Kapoor, Atul Kulkarni, Alice Patten, Soha Ali Khan, Madhavan

This story is, primarily, about two people; DJ (Aamir Khan) and Sue. DJ is a college student who, together with his friends, lead a relatively easy life, filled with partying and having fun. Sue is a documentarist at the BBC who stumbles across the diary of her grandfather, who served in the British army and was stationed in India where he was meant to keep the peace, and decides to devote a film to his memoirs.

The memoirs of Sue’s grandfather tell of his struggle with local insurgents fighting for an independent India, their capture and subsequent execution. He had come to respect the insurgents to such an extent that he was left awe-struck and deeply troubled by his task of executing them. The memoirs are filled with praise for these insurgents’ courage and ability to self-sacrifice, and Sue is inspired to tell their tale. When she finds that the BBC refuses to fund her project, she travels to India and tries to make the film on her own dime.

Sue meets with her good friend Sonia in Delhi and they hold auditions, which turns out to be a big disaster. The money for talented actors just isn’t there, and just when Sue is with her back to a wall, she is invited to an evening of fun with Sonia and her friends, lead by the charismatic and seemingly care-free DJ. DJ and his friends seem care-free, but are all, in one way or another, struggling with the deep-rooted social problems India; corruption, oppression, religious discrimination, etc. Hanging out with them, Sue is struck by the parallels between the problems of the past and the present, and she sees in DJ and his friends the actors of all the parts of the insurgency group that she needs. Just as Sue gets them to agree, disaster strikes the close-knit group of friends, which forces them to take matters into their own hands, try to force a positive change in their society, and become the men and women they were meant to play in Sue’s film.

While the film has all the traditional trappings of a Bollywood film (overacting, singing and dancing, etc.), it exercises them in a way that makes this film easily accessible for people who normally hate Bollywood films (like me.) The acting is superb, the story is gripping, and the characters are engaging. Aamir Khan walked away with every possible award for his role as DJ in this film, and rightly so. His performance is outstanding.

A little FF (fun fact): The woman who plays Sue is played by Alice Patten, daughter of the last governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten.

Planet Terror [2007]

Director: Robert Rodriguez
Actor: Naveen Andrews, Bruce Willis, Rose McGowan, Freddy Rodríguez, Jeff Fahey, Stacy Ferguson, Michael Biehn, Michael Parks, Josh Brolin, Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Robert Rodriguez

The Robert Rodriguez money making machine is showing its weakness, I think, in his latest film, Planet Terror. Where first his films were almost instantly considered cult-classics (El Mariachi, Four Rooms and even Spy Kids come to mind) and he had such success doing this that I have the feeling that even he started believing everything he touched turned into a cult classic. Sin City was a primo-example of this; there’s nothing cult about that film, but still people label it a cult classic because of its innovation and dark subject matter. This all paved the way for Grindhouse, in which Tarantino, who is also afflicted by the over-inflated belief of being a cult-classic-making-machine, and Rodriguez pair up to make two feature length films as an ode to the drive-in, low-budget, cult, exploitation films.

Trust me, there’s nothing low-budget, nor drive-in, nor exploitation about these films, and they’re about as much cult as I am a fucking monkey. I reviewed Death Proof, Tarantino’s feature here as well, and I liked it a lot. I don’t like Planet Terror nearly as much, but it’s definitely enjoyable.

The story is about a little town in Texas, close to an military base where a mad scientist (Andrews) is selling a biological weapon to a group of rogue soldiers under the leadership of Lt. Muldoon (Willis) who have been exposed to it, and have turned into crazed zombies, unless they keep exposing themselves to it from time to time. It’s like a drug to them. The sale goes bad, and instead of giving up the bio-weapon, the mad scientist shoots it, and lets it escape into the air. In the nearby town, people start to turn into crazed, disgusting (really!) zombies, and the infestation starts to spread. Only a few people seem to be immune to it, among others the mysterious El Wray (F. Rodriguez), a gun-slinger extraordinaire, and his girlfriend Cherry Darling (McGowan), who ends up losing a leg, but replaces it with a machine-gun. They, together with the other refugees, fight to get out of the area while battling hordes of oozing, puss-infested zombies.

I like this film, because it’s unashamedly bad. Plot-holes, bad acting, gratuitous cleavage, violence and gore are the main dish of this film, and I must admit laughing more than I did watching Death Proof, which is a far more conventional film than this one. Both films incorporated different elements to make it look dated, visual scratches, bad soundtrack, faded colours, etc., but I think Rodriguez nailed it a bit better than Tarantino did, even going so far to let the tap burn through and let one reel go missing (which incidentally contains most of the sex scene, and the explanation of El Wray’s history, and all kinds of little odds and ends, but it was done in a good, fun way.)

I recommend you watch Death Proof first, and then Planet Terror, since you might be a little numb after watching the latter in order to enjoy the first.

Munich [2005]

Director: Steven Spielberg
Actor: Eric Bana, Daniel Craig, Ciarán Hinds, Mathieu Kassovitz, Hanns Zischler, Geoffrey Rush

On the morning of September 5, with six days left in the Olympic Games in Munich, the worst tragedy in Olympic history hit. Eight Arab terrorists stormed into the Olympic village and raided the apartment building that housed the Israeli contingent. Two Israeli athletes were killed and nine more were seized as hostages. They demanded the release of over 200 Palestinians serving time in Israeli jails, along with two renowned German terrorists. After a day of unsuccessful negotiations, the terrorists collected the hostages and headed for the military airport in Munich for a flight back to the Middle East. At the airport, German sharpshooters opened fire, killing three of the Palestinians. A horrifying gun battle ensued, claiming the lives of all nine of the hostages, along with one policeman and two terrorists.

This film is a fictional follow-up to these events. Israel decides upon a response. They recruit five Mossad operatives under the leadership of Avner (Bana) to kill 11 men who all had a hand in the orchestration of the hostage-taking. They all have to resign from Mossad, and Israel no longer recognises their existence, and they start hunting them down one by one. Their jobs become more and more professional, but they themselves also run more and more risk of exposure, and counter-assassination. Slowly but surely they become paranoid and some of them lose their heart and start to question whether or not they’re doing the right thing.

I like this film, but I don’t love this film. I like this film because the story is pretty solid, some of the acting is good, and the feel of the movie is very ’70s, which fits. It’s nice to see assassins who are not stone-faced killers, like the assassins from Replacement Killers, for instance. I also like how it’s shown that all of them are convinced of their love for Israel, the need for retribution and the righteousness of the Israeli cause, and how that slowly gets turned into a confused mess of loyalties and ethics.

I don’t love this film because I thought that Eric Bana’s acting was sub-par. I have seen some of his films, like Chopper and Black Hawk Down, in which he really shines, but sometimes it seems like he’s having an off-day, like in Munich and Troy. Certain parts of the film are really well done, but other parts just seem a little empty, which is a shame.

What first seemed like a bit of Israeli propaganda, slowly turns into scathing criticism of terrorism in all its forms, climaxing into the very last shot of the film, of southern Manhattan, showing the World Trade Center towers in the background.