Jason Bourne

Hello dear reader. I’m going to start here with a statement that some of you may find controversial. A statement that some of you may not believe and possibly, a statement that you could just find plain odd. So here it is and please note that I was not under the influence of any mind altering substances, nor did I have a gun point at my head whilst typing.
‘I consider the first three Bourne films, Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum, to be the best movie trilogy ever made.’ That’s right, I said it. As far as I’m concerned you can keep your Star Wars, Godfathers and Lord of the Rings away from the gold medal plinth, as they have no business being there. I would also like to state for the record that I am also including the Christopher Nolan’s Batman films in that statement and for those of you who know me personally; you’ll understand what a big deal that is.

Now, I do also acknowledge that I doubt there will be many people out there in internet land who agree with me. Not only that but many of you will probably be now thinking about contacting your local social services and demanding to know why this man is allowed out into the community and why he’s been given unsupervised access to a computer. The reason why I think it’s the best is quite simply down to the story arc, characters and its action set pieces. Doug Liman (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, Swingers and Edge of Tomorrow) directed The Bourne Identity and then Paul Greengrass (United 93, Green Zone & Captain Phillips) took over and stepped into the director’s chair for Supremacy and Ultimatum. Between the two of them they managed to create a trilogy that didn’t pull its punches. It made the central character completely believable and stopped short of making him look like a superhero and then there’s the action. In Identity it showed us how to take out an American Embassy, Supremacy included a master class in driving and then, my personal favourite, the shootout in Ultimatum that was filmed in the middle of Waterloo station during a real rush hour with the general public none the wiser. What is also obvious from these three films is that a lot of energy and effort went into making them look and feel believable. Now at the end of Supremacy Mr. Bourne (spoilers ahead) swims away, up the Hudson River to live happily ever after. All loose ends having been neatly taken care of and all bad guys either taken into custody or swiftly dispatched. It’s the perfect three film story arc and yet those horrible little bean counters over at Universal decided that there was still money to be made from the Bourne name and unleashed The Bourne Legacy into the world, back in 2012. Which was a full five years after Supremacy had set sale. Legacy is an odd film. Despite the Bourne prefix, Matt Damon doesn’t appear in it. It goes back into the early mythology to try and justify its plot and it messes around with established facts from the films that came before it. However, it does have a good ensemble cast, which includes Jeremy Renner, Rachel Weisz and Edward Norton but as far as I can tell it was just a money making exercise that didn’t have the story or commitment to back it up.

So this brings us back to 2016. Now, to cut down on any confusion, from now on, I’m going to refer to the character Jason Bourne as ‘JB’ and the film as Jason Bourne, otherwise and to quote Dr Peter Venkman we could end up with ‘Human sacrifice dogs and cats living together and mass hysteria’, before this blog is finished. Why they couldn’t have just carried on utilising Robert Ludlum book titles is beyond me. The Bourne Betrayal was available and would have fitted the premise of the film very nicely but oh no. Let’s keep the character name and the film name exactly the same just so no one gets confused about what’s going on, that’ll work…

Matt Damon had on several previous occasions said that he would be more than happy to come back and play JB again but only if Paul Greengrass was director and the story made sense. Well in the summer 2015 he got his wish and cameras started rolling on what was to be the forth film with JB in it. Now, when I first heard about this film I wasn’t entirely sure that it was a good idea but over the last ten to twelve months or so my resolve weakened and I actually found myself thinking that, as the release date drew closer, I was getting more and more enthusiastic about it. This enthusiasm was reinforced with positive reports from various filming locations and early good word of mouth from film critics, whose opinions I value. So, with a happy disposition and a bounce in my step, I found myself heading off to my local multiplex, very much looking forward to seeing Matt Damon once again playing JB in Jason Bourne. My good mood lasted about thirty minutes.

It is my sad duty to inform you all that in my opinion Jason Bourne is an even bigger let down than Batman v Superman was. It’s just a really dull and lifeless movie. The plot, such that it is, centres on JB’s dad and how JB ends up being in the ‘super-soldier’ program which then also ties into the CIA’s plans to utilise and control a social media to monitor anyone and everyone.  It just seems painting by numbers when it comes to the action as well. There’s nothing new on offer here. We get the obligatory car chase. Been there, done that. Fisty cuffs with several, poorly trained CIA goons and the now almost necessary ‘which passport shall I use today’ shot. Mr. Damon has to contend with only twenty five lines of dialogue throughout the entire two hour film, which unfortunately doesn’t translate into a strong and silent type. It’s more along the lines of mute and moody. Don’t get me wrong; sometimes ‘less is more’ does work really well. Arnold Schwarzenegger only had seventeen words to say in the first Terminator film and that worked perfectly. I can honestly say that for hype versus end result, I don’t think I’ve been this disappointed in a film since Ridley Scott’s Prometheus. As I said before, there’s nothing new on offer here. The end of the film is set in Las Vegas, during which we see JB take on and defeat ‘The Asset’ (another well trained assassin, to those not in the know) and he’s played by Vincent Cassel. 

IF I WANTED TO WATCH MATT DAMON AND VINCENT CASSEL PLAY GOOD GUY VS BAD GUY IN VEGAS, I’D WATCH THE SODING OCEANS 11 FILMS!!!

Jason Bourne also has this year’s best supporting actress Oscar winner, Alica Vikander in it but she is doesn’t really get anything substantial to do. Apart from driving a van around the outskirts of Paddington Station and occasionally winding up CIA Director Robert Dewy, played by Tommy Lee Jones her sole purpose of the entire film seems to be to try and occasionally point the plot back in the right direction. And as for the aforementioned Mr. Jones. He seems to be doing a very passable impression of someone who has a face made out of liquid granite and that really didn’t have anything better to do.

Jason Bourne is a film that I really wanted to like but it’s a mess, pure and simple. I’ve read several reviews over the last week that have all hovered around the four out of five stars mark but honestly I think they must have been watching a completely different film to the one I saw. It’s boring and can apparently induce people into yawning at the drop of a hat. If you liked the first three films and let’s face it, they are like awesome and stuff, then just re-watch one of those instead of spending your hard earned money on something that will only tarnish the memory of a once great franchise.

Twitter Review:
Jason Bourne is about as exciting as switching energy providers & should be avoided if possible.
#JasonBored

Useful Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4196776/?ref_=nv_sr_1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v71ce1Dqqns
http://www.empireonline.com/movies/jason-bourne/review/

The Martian

Hello dear reader, it’s time once again to offer up my opinions on my most recent trip to the cinema. The film in question this time is of ‘The Martian’ but before I tell you the story about the film I need to, if you’ll indulge me, tell you the story about the book, which the film is based on… 

Along time ago, in a galaxy far far away lived a man by the name of Andy Weir. This man, as luck would have it, had never been stranded on another planet. Not even Mars but he did think it would be a great idea to write a book about someone who was. At the time Mr Weir had no publishing deal in place and in fact the closest he’d ever come to getting anything he’d written exposed to the big wide world was on a website where he would upload short stories.  There he was, sitting on this idea to write a story. Set in the not too distant future. About a man, who through no fault of his own, gets left behind in a totally hostile and inhospitable environment. The planet equivalent of Basildon, if you will. Mr Weir, by his own admission, had a few things in his favour when he started to create this story. Firstly, he is a huge ‘space nerd’, likes ‘relativistic physics’ and as luck would have it has an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of ‘manned spaceflight’. His ultimate goal was twofold. He wanted to compose something that would engage the reader and because he was a ‘space nerd’ he also wanted to make sure the science in his new story was correct. So much so, that he wrote his own computer programs to calculate travel times and make sure he got his flight paths hyper accurate. 

Now, as it turns out Mr Weir decided to serialise this novel online. This did two things; firstly it kept people coming back for more and secondly it meant he didn’t have to be finished before he started to upload it. The initial response for the book was more than Weir could ever have hoped for. He was soon being inundated with requests for the finished book to be made available on Kindle, thus making it easier to read on the move. After doing some quick research he found out that you can ‘self-publish’ pretty much whatever you’d like on Kindle and with weeks of his first request he had it available to download for the cheapest price available, 99 cents. Again, the response was nothing short of stunning and word of mouth soon spread. So much so, that within months of it first going live he had publishers asking if they could release it in paperback. Once it was it was only a short time before it started to garner interest from Hollywood. And the rest, as they say, is history. Twentieth Century Fox put up the money, Ridley Scott directed it and the all-star cast spend just over two hours and twenty minutes trying to bring Matt Damon’s ‘Mark Watney’, home. 

The first time I became aware of the book ‘The Martian’ was in the latter half of 2014. I heard it being discussed by Adam Savage (Mythbusters) on his podcast ‘Tested’. Adam said he was blown away by it and also said that he picked the book up to read on a flight and by his own admission ‘not been able to put it down’. He waxed lyrical about it’s tension, how it was a one man battle against the odds and that he ‘could not recommend it enough!’ Then I found out that it had been given the green light to be turned into a movie and that none other than sci-fi legend Ridley Scott was going to be sitting in the director’s chair. This basically turned what had been mild curiosity to read the book into an almost ‘I have to see this film at all costs’ kind of deal. 

Now to the business of the film itself. For those of you who have been living under a Martian rock (see what I did there) for the last twelve months or so, The Martian tells the story of the first manned missions to Mars. The ‘Ares Missions’ of which there will be at least 5, are for scientific research purposes and the betterment of mankind as a whole etc etc. The Martian concentrates on Ares 3. A mission that has six crew members and is designed to spend thirty one days on the surface of Mars. Things go wrong and the  mission has to commit an emergency evacuation from the surface due to a very large storm heading towards their base camp and it’s during this evacuation that Matt Damon’s ‘Mark Watney’ gets hit by an airborne communications dish and thrown away from the remaining crew as they head for the escape rocket. Or if you want it in technical NASA speak ‘MAV: Mars Ascent Vehicle’. Now, before you can say ‘Where’s there’s blame, there’s a claim’ the commander of the mission, Jessica Chastain’s ‘Melissa Lewis’ has to make the call to leave. This is partly down to the fact that they have no idea where Watney has ended up. Because of the storm and that visibility is practically zero and also because his spacesuit has stopped transmitting his bio read out information. Lewis has to assume that Watney is dead and as the wind speed is also causing the MAV to tilt past what is an acceptable angle for take-off she has to put the lives of the rest of her crew first. They successfully take off and then we cut to the morning after the night before, with Watney face down and half covered in dirt and sand. What follows is basically the story of one man’s determination to not to die on a planet that at best could be described as a ‘long walk’ away. 

Using only what he has at his disposal (Amazon apparently don’t deliver there….yet) he has to set about ensuring his survival and growing enough food until he thinks NASA will be able to stage a rescue. This last part is also dependant on him being able to contact NASA in the first place and telling them he isn’t dead. Not the easiest of tasks when you consider that the only communications system able to contact them was on the MAV. They say that in space no one can hear you scream, well, just for those not in the know, shouting doesn’t work either. 

The Martian is a shade over two hours and twenty minutes long but it doesn’t feel like a long film at all. From the moment things start to go south on Mars, it grabs your attention and doesn’t give you much of a chance to relax. As I mentioned earlier there is a pretty good supporting cast here and a lot of them don’t really get a huge amount of screen time. People like Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Sean Bean were more than happy to play second fiddle to Matt Damon. I can only assume the calibre of actor willing to take these small parts is down to two reasons. Firstly the director involved and secondly the quality of the screenplay. Oh and if you happen to find yourself in a pub quiz in the not too distant future and you’re asked to name a film that Sean Bean doesn’t die in, write down The Martian. He does lose his job but I am happy to report that he makes it all the way through to the final credits. Isn’t killed by an Orc or anything!

So I’ll finish up by giving you a few do’s and don’ts about The Martain. If you get the chance, do read the book first. It’s funnier than the film and contains a lot more of the science ‘why’s and wherefores’ that go into Watney’s decision making process. Don’t be put off by the thought of watching someone effectively talking to themselves for two hours. Do make sure that if you wear glasses or contact lenses, you have them in or on as the film is visually breath-taking and finally, once you’ve seen it, don’t give away the ending, Iron Man wouldn’t want you to… 

Twitter Review:

If you like your 'abandoned in space' films with a little bit of a disco theme, then The Martian is definitely for you.

#BringHimHome

Useful Links:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/?ref_=nv_sr_2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ej3ioOneTy8

http://www.empireonline.com/reviews/review.asp?FID=139094