Script review - "The Bourne Supremacy" (2003) by Tony Gilroy and Brian Hegeland

Pulsating, gripping action script - not just by Gilroy, apparently, but a few hands. This one ends with Bourne captured - then he escapes. Did that happen in the novel? I can't remember if it did. The bit where Bourne does a mea culpa to the girl whose parents he killed seemed to work better on the page than it did in the movie, from memory... though my memory is hazy. Love the descriptions of things and the way it's put together. It really is one long chase though, with some stock twists (OMG the baddy is the head baddy, etc)

Movie review - "Jason Bourne" (2016) **1/2 (warning: spoilers)

The Bourne films set the agenda for modern day spy movies with their sense of realism and fast pace, and the first four movies were strong, but this one is a disappointment despite the return of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass.

Technically it's fine - it looks polished, the action is solid. I think the biggest problem is the story - there's nothing new about it. So much of it feels familiar - the head baddy behind a headset following Bourne (Tommy Lee Jones instead of Chris Cooper, David Strathairn, Ed Norton) who clashes with a female (Alicia Vikander instead of Joan Allen), a girl who likes him being killed in the opening sequence (Julia Stiles instead of Fanka Potente), Bourne being chased by a super assassin (Victor Cassell instead of Clive Owen), Bourne forcing a woman to drive, a sequence where Bourne meets someone in London who winds up killed.

I was excited by the idea of Bourne learning more about his past but we just learn that his father started Treadstone and was killed... it just gives him an excuse to go an kill people). The stuff about government oversight into privacy on line is boring. Why do spy movies try to get political? I really wish they'd tied it in to events of the fourth movie - a Jeremy Renner/Matt Damon cross over would've been awesome.

It lacks emotion and boldness - there was really no reason to make this film except money. I know you could've said that about all of them, but the first three sequels all tried  in places to be different and this doesn't.

Documentary review - "Five Came Back" (2016) ****

Lots of books get written about Hollywood, but only a few get the deluxe documentary treatment - I'm guessing this got up because it focuses on directors who were so idolised by A list baby boom directors who agreed to appear on camera - this has Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo de Toro, Lawrence Kasdan, Paul Greengrass.

It is a good story - some leading Hollywood directors going off to war and being affected by the experiences: John Huston, John Ford, George Stevens, William Wyler, Frank Capra. All were characters of very different stripes: Huston was an adventurer, who couldn't help bucking against army authority, making several masterpieces including one on PTSD; Ford loved the military, probably had a high old time but was affected by it - took great delight in tormenting John Wayne while making They Were Expendable, and saw action; Wyler was a Jew, very conscious of the Jewish issues underlying the war; Capra was an Italian-American patriot (well they were all patriots), determined to show his new country how loyal he was; Stevens a great liberal.

The war affected them in several ways: Capra never really recovered his former position; Stevens lost his sense of humour.

The fact this is a documentary means you can see the films, especially important for the war films. The directors interviewed, not surprisingly, are good communicators. It's very touching how much del Toro feels a kinship for Capra, and Spielberg and Coppola's enthusiasm is always winning. Kasdan is a very bright analyst.

Movie review - "Captain Phillips" (2013) ****

Another excellent true life action tale from Paul Greengrass despite a miscast Tom Hanks in the lead. Oh I know he's conscientious and gives a good performance and all that stuff but he still looks like Tom Hanks with a beard and glasses and never really convinces as a sea captain.

Everything around him feels authentic though - I'm sure it was hyped for Hollywood (eg Phillips demanding the hostages take him instead of his men, his final attack of his kidnappers) but so much of it looks and seems authentic: the Somali actors, the views of Oman and the Indian ocean, the big tanker, the logistics of how modern day pirates work and the techniques against them, the American Navy Seals and their methods, the naval ships. It's visually different and fascinating.

I also liked how you wind up having sympathy for the Somalians, particularly that young kid. Barkhad Abdi is very good as the head pirate though the others impress as well. Max Martini felt very believable as the head negotiator.

I did feel this went on a bit - it's over two hours, with perhaps too much time spent in the life boat - but the finale is very intense and moving. (The scenes were the pirates attack are great too), And it was great how they devoted some time to Phillips' immediate PTSD. And yes he is depicted as heroically but the film doesn't shy away from the fact that after the first pirate attack Phillips might have taken more precautions - and the crew come out of it well.

Movie review - "The Bourne Ultimatum" (2007) ***1/2 (warning: spoilers)

Because this was going to be the entry where we discover the truth about Jason Bourne it was set up to be a rare third-one-in-the-series which was as good as the other two, and further re-assurance was provided by the return of Tony Gilroy and Paul Greengrass.
Certainly much of it is excellent, particularly two massive action set pieces: a chase through Waterloo Station and a similar one through the streets of Tangier (this features some "jumping through window" stunts which are literally breathtaking). But some of the script is annoyingly loose or undeveloped, as if they had to rush it through to make a shoot date: why have a scene with Bourne and his dead girlfriend's brother which doesn't pay off? (You could have used it that the brother tells Bourne about the newspaper article instead of him just having read it). Its far too much of a coincidence to have Julia Stiles just rock up (they could have taken the sting out of it - she could have told the Madrid CIA guy about Bourne, which prompted him to talk to the journalist - as it is the Madrid CIA guy's motivation is never discussed and Stiles comes across as a coincidence). While David Straithairn adds authority as a baddie, Scott Glenn has probably been in this sort of movie one too many times and Albert Finney's last minute appearance would have been a bit more exciting had we not already had a similar turn from him in "Oceans 12".
The film misses emotional opportunities wholesale, with a promising Stiles-Bourne plot only hinted at and Bourne not really doing anything much with the discovery of his real identity (he finds out he volunteered... that's it??? How about finding out about his family, more about his past, etc.) The dialogue has too many "we have a situation"s.
And the ending with it-all-hits-the-media-and-congressional-hearings-result struck as false because that never happens in real life and one of the best things about the Bourne films was they seemed more realistic than other action movies (at times the action here approaches cartoony levels, too, with Bourne just knocking out most of the people out to get him and only killing them if they're really, really bad, and Bourne surviving falling off the top of a building in a car without barely a scratch - and an assassin surviving a head-on collision in a sequence which is a bit too similar to the one in Bourne Supremacy. And how does he get into the CIA office anyway?).
So you start to pick - I totally believed the first two because they were sort of rogue operations but surely no way is the CIA this efficient ("I want X men on the ground, I want the whole system shut down") - although maybe this is why they can't find Osama Bin Laden, they spend all their time hunting down rogue operatives. And the thing with the structure of the film in relation to the timing of the second film is really clever.

Movie review - "United 93" (2006) *****

The best movie I've seen at a cinema in years - I had such an emotional response to it that by the end I was totally gutted, I couldn't move out of my chair. Incredibly powerful, I felt as though I was a passenger on the plane. You see the passengers: old ladies, young women, family men. Its heartbreaking. My heart was pounding from the beginning because I knew what was going to happen - the most exciting sequences are when the terrorists take over and the final assault. Only real debit: some of the acting is a little iffy. But the ones who play the terrorists are terrific and generally the standard of acting is fine. A masterpiece.