The grass is always greener on the other side. Or is it? Perhaps not sufficiently pleased with Doug Liman's handling of the Bourne Identity to re-enlist his services, the producers of this sequel decided to hand the reigns over to Paul Greengrass, perhaps best known for the decidedly more effective Bloody Sunday. Where Greengrass' patented UnsteadyCam (TM) approach can be argued to have given Bloody Sunday a more visceral, documentary-style, as-it-unfolds realism, his more-shaking-means-more-impressing style of camera work applied to this movie leaves me feeling singularly unimpressed.
Doubts about his directorial prowess immediately arise from the first 20 minutes of this movie. "Is he a one trick pony?" one asks. Was it not blatantly obvious to him how truly inappropriate the camera technique was for this kind of movie? The amount of camera panning, zooming, shaking, blurring, etc. in this movie makes it seem like the scenes can't stand on their own - almost as though he's trying to overcompensate for some inadequacy. Is this the only technique he can muster to raise the excitement level and the sense of peril in the action sequences?
Over analyzation aside, at a simple gut reaction level, this movie was annoying to try to look at - you want to avert your eyes or risk suffering a seizure. Just at those very moments when you're most intently interested in paying close attention to the details of what's going on, you aren't given much of a chance to take anything in. Was this man on speed throughout the making of this movie? Really the only place where the UnsteadyCam(TM) approach works is the fight sequence - which, in the movie's defence, is about the most visceral of any fight sequence coming out of Hollywood movies these days - a far cry from the ridiculously over-choreographed, yawn-inducing, the-hero-is-never-in-any-real-danger-and-they-may-as-well-make-him-fly-on-strings-like-in-those-martial-arts-movies fight sequences that are so much par for the course in this sad age of unthrilling thrillers.
So, how is one to suspend disbelief when you're made so completely aware of the presence of the cameraman that you feel that you, yourself could be the person holding the camera and capturing every acted move? Nothing could make a thriller such as this feel less real and less believable than having the sense that there's someone there filming it while it happens. That's just downright absurd. The camera work should feel completely transparent, so that you lose yourself to the fiction. And, I'm sorry, but I just don't buy the explanation that the frenetic camera work "takes us into the crazed, hyperactive, and paranoid mind of Jason Bourne". Greengrass uses the exact same technique throughout the movie, in many sequences absent of Bourne. In fact, the camera goes nuts in all the sequences where you can tell that Greengrass is trying to add excitement - or something.
So, it smacks to me of Greengrass reaching in desperation for the only thing he knows. Either that, or we've reached the next level in product marketing through movies: they're no longer content with merely plastering movies with wall-to-wall product placements (as in the case of The Terminal) - now they're actually making movies that absolutely require you to use a certain product in order to get through them. In the case of this movie, I theorize it must have been sponsored by the makers of Dramamine. Yes, you'll think twice about going to the theater again without your motion sickness meds. If not because you - personally - are sensitive of stomach, then at least so you can offer a dose to all those sitting around you as a preventive measure to protect you from violent streams of projectile vomit.
Key to a successful action thriller is getting the audience to connect with the lead character. Unfortunately, in some of the key action sequences where the audience most needs connection with Bourne, Greengrass' camera technique only leaves you feeling scattered and disconnected. Camera angles and perspectives seem to change faster than you can bat an eyelid. How is it that movies can get made like this? What is it about the movie-making process that is so broken that there's no voice of reason that pipes up "this is wrong - it's just not working".
Overall, the acting was adequate but not brilliant. Given Greengrass' fixation on shoving the camera - and us - all over the place, I'm not sure he would have had much time left to really leverage the great acting skills available to this production. The soundtrack music is OK for some parts of the movie, but mostly it's just rather generic and lackluster and sounds like perhaps it wasn't even composed for this movie - as though they pulled some canned tracks from a production music library. I'm inclined to blame this failure on the direction. And I swear there was a brief moment during the underwater sequence early on when I heard a sound effects recording of running water. Running water? Underwater!!?!? Did the sound designer just pull up the wrong sound effect file and noone noticed? Or maybe the director or someone said "Water! Dammit, we need more water! It doesn't sound watery enough. Add more water." And then the sound designer is like "Alright, you stupid f*#$%, you want water? I got your water right here!" (inside his head, of course). So he gets his revenge by adding something that's technically water but conspicuously wrong for the scene. I dunno, it's fun to imagine, at least.
The plot for this movie was exceptionally weak. Are we really to believe that the CIA folks are so stupid that they couldn't recognize a one-fingerprint-frameup? Given their history with Jason Bourne, are we to accept that they would so quickly believe he would be so sloppy as to leave one proud, pristine, and complete fingerprint on his handiwork? There's really little plot to this movie. People just won't leave Bourne alone, they kill his main squeeze, he gets pissed off, goes on a rampage and kills a bunch of spooks. In the end, he's rewarded with one more tiny nugget about his mysterious lost past, but not enough information to prevent us from having to endure another sequel. Where do you go from "Supremacy", anyway? The Bourne Uber-Overlord Dominion?
End credit title effects were gratuitous fluff with no thematic connection to the movie. All in all, this whole movie was a hodge-podge of poorly tied together elements, with nothing innovative to offer, and made all the more frustrating by the unrelenting which-angle-shall-we-use-this-second camera work. The director is not just given enough rope to hang himself, but also to hang the audience - and all the supremely talented people that contribute to a project of this scale - along with him. Don't waste your time with this dog. Many excellent ingredients are wasted in this dish, simply because the chef thought it would be clever to add a truckload of salt. Supremely irritating.
The only pleasure I got from this movie was in venting my rage for it in this review. Thank you for listening - you saved me a trip to the shrink. Unless your goal is to be inspired, as I was, to write a scathing review or stimulate the purge that is part of your eating disorder, save yourself the trouble.