Tuesday, January 13, 2009

The Bourne Existentialist

So a fourth Bourne film is in the making. Currently the Trilogy has grossed $945 million and is noted for its realism.

Wow.

Realism….

I watched part of the first film one night. Granted I missed the first 20 minutes or so. I started watching it from when he's aware he has no memory of ANYTHING, EVER, yet he's sat in a cafe and he knows that the guy at the counter weighs roughly 215lbs and 'knows how to handle himself'; the licence plates of the 3 cars outside; that the waitress is left handed; that the exit is approximately 7 sprint steps away to his left; the best place to find a gun would be in the grey truck parked outside and that he could run for up to half a mile at the high altitude before collapsing.


He's practically a super hero, but...BUT he still doesn't know who he is. He's being tracked by CIA who now want to kill him and blah, people crashing through windows, hand to hand combat (vicious behaviour with a ball point pen, eugh!), high speed car chase in a mini, kicking doors open instead of just using the handle, using guns to open tins of dog food and whatnot. Meh. Just unnecessarily, overcomplicated and explosive.


You just sit there on sensory overload, unable to think about anything apart from what’s happening in front of your eyes. I found it hard to just switch off and just watch the film. There's far too much vying for your attention. Is it just me that gets like that with these kind of films? Maybe I just have a lowthreshold. I do like action films, but only when the plot is non-existent.

I like to switch off with a Jackie Chan or Tony Jaa film, because the plot is so thin on the ground, it's ok that there are a million people leaping about doing great things. With a lot of these Hollywood action films, they put the actors in such impossibly unbelievable situations so they have to be incredibly talented to act them out convincingly and most of the time.....they're not, they just happen to look nice on screen. I ended up spending the rest of the film ignoring the supposed story line because I was being distracted by the fact that a CIA agent was played by the repressed homosexual marine corp in American Beauty and that fact that it was set in Paris, and I want to go to Paris again.


I stopped watching after a while, because ….I was umm bored despite the ridiculous plot and action on the screen. I think it would have been more fun if it focused more on his memory loss. A film just about him grappling with the concept of life, the world, people, consciousness etc, an existentialist adventurer. The Bourne Existentialist, seeing as he'd had his memory completely wiped, a complete blank slate....

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1 comment:

TaBByfan said...

Hi,

I also loathe these stupid Bourne movies and thought many of the same things you speak of.

They disgust me almost as much as when I read your blog and snork coca-cola (involuntarily) up my nose due to insane laughter. I blame you for this, but I respect your right to do so, freely and with impunity. :)