Kinematoscope

A while ago I tried to read Robert Ludlum classic The Bourne Identity, but compared to the film of the same name I found it dryer than dry. I needed a glass of water after three pages.

Instead, let's talk about the second followup to the film adaptation, 2008's The Bourne Ultimatum.

The Key Players:

Director Paul Greengrass took some time out from dramatizing important historical events like the Bogside Masssacre (Bloody Sunday) and 9/11 (United 93) to make the second and third Bourne movies, taking over from Doug Liman.

Oscar-winning screenwriter Matt Damon makes his second appearance on the countdown, limiting himself to acting this time.

Triple oscar nominee Joan Allen (Nixon, The Crucible, The Contender) and teen Shakespearian Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You, O, the Ethan Hawke Hamlet that wasn't as bad as you think) both return from Supremacy to show us the CIA has a conscience.

Meanwhile, character actor David Strathairn (Good Night and Good Luck, also he was totally Kim Basinger's pimp in L.A. Confidential you guys) and familiar southern gentleman Albert Finney play the ruthless CIA bad guys.



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The Story:

One suspects a "PREVIOUSLY, ON THE BOURNE SAGA" style highlight reel might be necessary, but it isn't. We start en media res as Bourne (Damon) runs from Russian police (I believe right after finally killing the dude that killed Marie in Supremacy). Even though he's limping, he ducks most of them, and gets the drop on two that follow him into a janitor's closet. "Don't kill me." One of them pleads.

"My argument is not with you," Bourne responds- he's begun to have flashbacks to his initial indoctrination into the supersoldier program (just in time for a third film!).

Sometime later he goes to London to track down a journalist for The Guardian that's mentioned 'Jason Bourne' in an article or two. Of course this journalist has also caught the attention of the CIA (chiefly David Strathairn's ruthless Deputy Director Noah Vosen). Despite Jason Bourne, smartest man in the world, and his clever dodging tactics, the journo ends up dead at the hands of a CIA sniper- though Bourne takes his notes before getting away.

Bourne tracks the CIA leak that was speaking to the dead guy to Madrid (Vosen and co. right behind him), and makes an unlikely ally in Nicky Parsons (Stiles). They follow the leak to Tangiers, Morrocco, and a crazy chase ensues to stop another CIA "asset" from killing the guy.

But then he blows up. Sensing a pattern here? After being forced to yet again kill another supersoldier just like himself in order to survive, Bourne sends Nicky on the run and takes the fight home to America.

The Artistry:

I was interested to turn a critical eye on the third Bourne movie- even though it's by far the most critically revered of the series, it's still a pretty straightforward action movie. What did it do any better than the first two?

The first half of Ultimatum in particular, in which Big Bad CIA dude Strathairn has the upper hand and Bourne spends a lot of time and energy trying to talk to two dudes who promptly get killed, might be a labor to watch.

But the first big sequence, involving a sniper, security cameras, and a cleverly placed pre-paid cellphone, is still riveting cinema- excellently staged and paced, plus the cellphone bit is just clever (and if I had a lot of money to waste on phones I would do it to strangers all the time). The chase through Madrid, however, is kind of a bore, since it consists mainly of people staring at maps on computer screens and a bafflingly naieve guy that we know is about ot explode.

But it doesn't take that long, and the Bourne brand has always been about delaying answers with well-made action setpieces. Plus, instead of regrouping after Bourne is foiled again, Ultimatum moves headlong into a stunning pursuit of the Evil Agent guy through the streets to keep him from killing Nicki.

His eventual takedown of the rival assassin, Desh, is punctuated by my favorite close-quarters weapon of the series (a book!) and that famous shot where the camera follows Bourne as he jumps from a rooftop, through a window across the alley.

The Bourne Ultimatum reaches real heights with that sequence, taking the raw energy and realism of the prior films and ratcheting everying up a few notches. The entire film contains several intentional homages to the previous two (I didn't realize we were so sentimental about them)- wikipedia has the full list.

You almost don't ever need to see those two again- but just almost. Supremacy of course began with the shocking death of Bourne's girlfriend Marie, and Greengrass and Gilroy make the wise choice to have that death still reverberate strongly- Damon plays the pain and remorse well, and it's a welcome additional motivation for the character, since 'who am I?' is getting a little old at this point.

Joan Allen throws a welcome wrench in the formula as well, since Bourne finally has an ally on the inside. This leads to a brilliant endgame...

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

In a brilliant retconning of the closing scene of Supremacy, Bourne calls the only CIA stooge with a conscience, Pam Landy (Allen), who covertly passes him the address of the supersecret training facility. He tells her to meet him in the park, then strolls into Vosen's office while the entire teams goes there to intercept him.

He finally gets to the final showdown with Finney, the brains of the whole operation, who reveals the somewhat-shocking truth: Bourne volunteered for the program by shooting an anonymous man in the head, just because they told him to.

Although it's clear that he does so after a fair amount of psyche-breaking-down type conditioning, it's just as clear that he does it willingly. The lesson here, just like in Total Recall, is that sometimes wiping your memory can make you a better person.

Bourne decides not to kill Finney, and escapes to the roof. There he is confronted by another CIA assassin that he spared earlier, who spares him in turn. Vosen gets a cheap shot in as Bourne jumps into the East River. I bet you can guess if he dies or not.

Also Landy faxes some documents somewhere and the bad dudes go on trial for being jerks, or something. Hooray!

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Slightly higher. It serves nicely as a summation of the whole series which saves us all a lot of time in the long run.

The Legacy:

Well it won three Oscars, and I guess there's going to be a Jason Bourne-less fourth movie (directed by Tony Gilroy). So that's something.

The Bourne series on the whole had an effect on the overall grittiness of the action genre in the last decade, exemplified best by James Bond's transformation from a cufflink-adjusting eyebrow raiser (Die Another Day) to a badass that strangled people to death in men's restrooms (Casino Royale).

The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Because it's fun, a side by side of the recreated scene from Supremacy.



Leftover Thoughts:

-Also it's strongly implied that Nicki knew Bourne (nee Jason Webb) intimately before he became a super soldier and lost his memory, but it's quickly moved past and never revisted, which I liked.

-Julia Stiles' wordless reaction after Bourne kills Desh is some great acting. It boggles me that she's spent so much of her career choosing terrible scripts.

-Rumor has it that Tom Stoppard did an uncredited polish on the script, further proof that he is awesome.


Coming Up...

157. The Big Sleep

156. Ben-Hur

155. The Manchurian Candidate

In Clint Eastwood's storied career of playing no-nonsense toughguys, and directing no-nonsense, serious films, not once has he touched upon the supernatural. It's been all western gunfights and gritty crime thrillers, alternating with Very Serious Oscar Type Movies.

Which is why Hereafter, three interwoven narratives about death and the afterlife, seemed like such a promising idea. Who wouldn't want to see Eastwood's steady hand (and Peter Morgan's lauded pen) brought to the quote unquote fantasy genre? Sure, the reviews are mixed, but watch the trailer below- it certainly seems like they're swinging for the fences with the premise.

The problem is, it's really more of a sac bunt than anything. Eastwood treats the profound questions involved with his usual straightforward frankness, but Hereafter doesn't offer any answers. It doesn't even speculate about them for too long, really.

Instead, it seems to find itself profound for raising them in the first place, even though pretty much everyone alive has asked them for pretty much all of history. It's as if Eastwood and Morgan (who's mostly written historical dramas about real things and people) had actually never seen anything involving psychics who can talk to the dead, near-death experiences, or ghosts, and thought they had truly original concepts that could do all the heavy lifting for them.



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Let's break it down. Matt Damon is a John Edward-type psychic who can speak to the dead, after briefly touching a bereaved loved one. Cécile de France is a French news anchor that has a near-death experience during a tsunami in Thailand and is moved to write a book about it. And Marcus is a young boy who's just lost his twin brother, Jason, and is all sad and stuff about it (amateurs Frankie and George McLaren play the twins, but we'll refer to them by character names since I don't know which plays which).

Eastwood apparently chose to cast amateur twin actors, and it pretty much shows, all the time, whenever they say anything. But Damon and de France are superb, and flourish as most good actors do under Eastwoods fast, hands-off direction. Bryce Dallas Howard shines in a supporting role despite some awful bangs as well.

And this film looks great- the opening, which follows de France through the tsunami, is breathtaking filmmaking, even if it was all CGI (no clue). Even the brief glimpses of the afterlife, which appears to be a bright white endlesses where everyone stands four feet apart in all directions for no reason, are tasteful and hazy.


It's just that Hereafter has nothing to say. The three plots converge in the end for brief moments of predictable frustration, and then the credits come up all at once. It's not really possible to get into this without spoilers, so...

SPOILERS! A FRICKIN' TSUNAMI OF THEM!

Here's Hereafter in a nutshell: during the film, Damon writes two letters. The first is a letter explaining to his brother (Jay Mohr) that he won't be helping him relaunch his profitable medium business because he can't take the bad juju (dreams, making people cry, etc) associated with his ability. The second is a letter he writes to de France after he touches her hand at a book signing, and sees not a dead loved one but a brief glimpse of her near-death tsunami. It's like three pages long and causes her to meet him in a cafe at the end of the film.

Got that? Now which letter do you suppose the film helpfully has Damon read to us via voiceover? You would hope its the second one, full of information about seeing the afterlife, the connection he feels to another important character, and the relief that he's found someone he can touch without being bugged by her dead loved ones, right?

Nope. It's the brief note to his brother, which we can easily guess says "sorry, can't do this anymore," because that's what he's been saying the WHOLE FILM. It even paraphrases the film's worst line, which is about how it's not a gift, it's a CURSE, to have this ability, boo hoo, etc.

De France reads the second letter and this real emotional music plays, like there must be some really profound stuff there, but not one clue do we get on that front.

The other main plot intersection, when little Marcus runs into Damon as well and pesters him until he does a reading, is done well enough, but offers nothing unexpected. Marcus feels sad, Damon tells him his brother says to be strong, and so on. Then Damon says Jason, the dead brother, has left. Where did he go? Marcus asks. Damon doesn't know. Even after all those readings, he doesn't know.

So that's it, then. Huh.

Eastwood's dramas sometimes have a procedural, obligatory feel, but it's easy to forgive in things like Changeling and Mystic River (a literal procedural) because they build to some intense, cathartic scenes. Hereafter builds to one scene (Damon and Marcus) that's shrug-worthy and one unread letter/brief cafe meeting- there is one weird vision (Damon's... I guess?) of the two of them kissing, but then the film literally ends on them shaking hands.

It takes away nearly all of the weight any earlier events seemed to hold. I enjoyed the subplot where Damon's gift ruins a budding relationship with Bryce Dallas Howard, his partner in a cooking class, and maybe if the film had been framed as some-sort of death-tinged romantic comedy or something the ending with de France would have been satisfying ("Who can find love with all these CRAZY GHOSTS flying around!? This fall catch Matt Damon in Paranormal Connectivity!").

PRETTY MUCH THE END OF ANY SPOILERS


There's a scene halfway through Hereafter wherein Marcus runs away from his foster parents (his mom's a junkie, much time is spent on this for no reason at all) and goes to a series of crackpots and wannabes to communicate with his dead brother. Even with another subplot (via de France's book) about how legitimate afterlife research is shunned and scoffed at, the film wants to smirk and roll its eyes at these poseurs and charlatans, too.

Too bad Hereafter is right there among them, distracting us with tsunamis and subway explosions to hide the fact that it's got nothing real to offer us.

Leftover Thoughts:

-Gotta say the marketing really failed on this one. Look at that poster up there- it's all blue with the freaky scifi lines and all. And the shadowy figure in the distance- definitely thought we'd spend more than a few seconds in the afterlife. The trailer, meanwhile, puts the tsunami two thirds of the way through, making it seem like an escalation of events rather than the trigger of one of the plot threads. It seems more like "Hey some people were curious about the afterlife AND THEN EVERYTHING BLEW UP AAAAH."

-Fun to see Bobby Baccala from The Sopranos stretching his range to play an Italian chef. Jay Mohr, meanwhile, is always a slick douchebag who wants to exploit people, in everything.

-Just so we're clear, I might have enjoyed Hereafter in spite of its lack of answers if it had not answered them in a more interesting way. It's just that it seemed to be purposefully building to de France and Damon and the little kid meeting, and then backed off when they all got in the same place and had no idea what to do. Once Damon decides to go meet de France there's a scene where he asks for her in the lobby of her hotel and she isn't there. What purpose is served by him having to leave the MacGuffin note and meet her two scenes later?

-I realized I haven't seen very many but my favorite film about the afterlife is still Wristcutters: A Love Story

1. Matt Damon (1 for 2) for Invictus

"This team was asked to exceed their expectations. It’s a metaphor for what the country needed to do because everybody was expecting them to not be able to heal. It was Francois’s integrity and leadership that I needed to get across with the role." -collider

Damon finally returns to the ranks of Oscar nominee after Good Will Hunting, but it couldn't be for a more boring role. Invictus is fascinating at points, in the same way the non-fiction book its based on must be- that all happened? But the workmanlike Eastwood approach doesn't lend much to the drama of the role, so it's hard to get behind Damon as an Oscar candidate- especially when his role in The Informant! is the best of his career so far.


2. Woody Harrelson (0 for 1) for The Messenger

"There are certain protocols they have in the Army and the rest of the military, but there's no easy way to do it. You just say, "The Secretary of the Army regrets to inform you..." And it's the hardest job in the Army. Even people I met at Walter Reed who had lost an arm or a leg would say, "Oh, no, I don't want to do that. I'd much rather go back into combat." Nobody wants that job, because you're walking in and breaking someone's heart." -amc

The Messenger is a wonderful character piece that's less histronic than any film about Casualty Notifcation officers has any right to be. Harrelson gets the more subtle role as the mentor to Ben Foster's Iraq war veteran, and is surprisingly perfect for it.


3. Christopher Plummer (0 for 0) for The Last Station

"There was a chance to redeem [Tolstoy] from a kind of universal view that he was dry. He wrote these long, heavy going – wonderful though they were, human novels. But was he fun? Did he have a lark every now and then?" -darkhorizons

Plummer took the relatively blank slate that is Tolstoy in most of the pop consciousness and put an emphatic stamp of his own on it in a vibrant, alternately hilarious and stately turn. BUt how this is billed as a supporting performance (while Helen Mirren is a "leading" one) is beyond me.

Moreover, how on earth has Plummer never been nominated before? And why isn't he getting any "Oscar for the whole career" buzz this season?


4. Stanley Tucci (0 for 0) for The Lovely Bones

“It was hard in every respect. I was very reticent to take the part at first. I have kids and I can’t really read anything or watch anything with kids getting harmed. I don’t like things about serial killers. There’s so much serial killer information out there in documentaries constantly. A lot of it’s just sort of gratuitous or it’s almost like pornographic really. There’s no reason for it being shown. This was not that.” -canmag

I've never been interested in reading The Lovely Bones, and was sort of relieved that the lack of critical love (and nominations) for the film adaptation exempted me from seeing it as well. So I'm sure Tucci does a great job going to a dark place, but he's not winning anyway.


5. Christoph Waltz (0 for 0) for Inglourious Basterds

"What makes [Landa] so intriguing is exactly that; he’s not driven by an ideology. When people say “Nazi,” it’s such a gross generalization, I feel. And sometimes I feel compelled to say, 'Well, he’s not even a Nazi.' Yes, he wears that uniform, but he doesn’t care. Not about Nazi ideology. He’s completely unideological. He just understands how the world turns, and in that way, he’s three steps ahead of everyone else." -slashfilm

Another year, another sure-thing supporting actor winner for a role as a complete psychopath (after Javier Bardem and Heath Ledger). Waltz is the flashier, most memorable, and most deftly-played part of Tarantino's sprawling love-letter to WWII, and has no doubt politely declined to dust off a space on his mantle just yet- but he defintiely has his speech ready.

Happy Tuesday, everyone! Today we take a look at yet another Best Picture nominee, 1997's Good Will Hunting- another deserving film beaten by Titanic (which is decidedly not going to appear on this countdown. L. A. Confidential, which also lost that year, is at #65 as of this writing).

So many questions. Will we set a record for f-bombs in a countdown entry? Will we find clues to Ben Affleck's later poor script selection in this early triumph? Do we like dem apples? And is it Will's fault? Is it?

The Key Players:

Director Gus Van Sant recently earned a second nomination for Best Director for Milk, and won a Palm D'Or for 2003's Elephant. A giant of indie films, if that makes any sense, he's also the auteur behind such celebrated films as Even Cowgirls Get The Blues, My Own Private Idaho, To Die For, and Paranoid Park.

Matt Damon and Ben Affleck famously launched themselves to fame writing and starring in this film. Affleck was the slightly bigger star at the time (starring in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy), but Damon is the slightly bigger star these days. He's headlined three Bourne action movies and landed roles in The Departed, Saving Private Ryan, and the Ocean's series, and is also f*cking Sarah Silverman.

Ben Affleck's successes have been just as big, if less critically lauded (Armaggeddon, Pearl Harbor, The Sum Of All Fears), but his failures have been noticeably more spectacular, between Gigli and Daredevil). He's recently made a comeback of sorts with respectable roles in films like Hollywoodland and State Of Play and directing the well-received Gone Baby Gone, and he's also f*cking Jimmy Kimmel.

People under the age of thirty might not generally be aware of this, but Robin Williams used to be more than an utterly insane individual and bit player in awful family comedies. He was a respectable dramatic actor, winning an Oscar for his work here after nominations for Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, and The Fisher King. Granted he has always balanced art-fare with family-friendly crowd-pleasers, but even those used to actually please crowds: Jumanji, Hook, and Mrs. Doubtfire have held up all-right, and his voice-work in Aladdin is my favorite part.

He has always been utterly insane, though.

Stellan Skarsgard (The Hunt For Red October, Ronin) Oscar nominee Minnie Driver (Circle Of Friends, Grosse Point Blank), and Casey Affleck (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Gone Baby Gone) round out our cast, but I should probably get to the movie already, huh?



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The Story:

Damon and Affleck's award-winning script is verbally dense, but the plot is rather simple: Damon plays the eponymous Will Hunting, an orphaned, wary 20-year-old from South Boston with a rap sheet, abandonment issues, and the mind of a genius.

Working as a janitor at MIT, he solves an advanced math problem left on a hallway blackboard, bringing him to the attention of renowned math professor Gerry Lambeau (Skarsgard)- the professor goes to his latest hearing for assault charges and convinces the judge to release Will, provided he meet weekly with a therapist.

That therapist, after a few hilarious failed-attempts with stuffier shrinks, turns out to be Lambeau's college roommate Sean Maguire (Williams), who develops a rocky rapport with Will.

Will also meets a British Harvard med student, Skylar (Driver), and struggles with letting her into his life, which previously consisted only of a few loyal friends (two of whom are played by Afflecks).

Can a young man find his way in the world, even if all he has are a genius intellect, loyal friends, an impassioned mentor, a concerned therapist, and the love of a beautiful woman? Stay tuned to find out.

The Artistry:

Good Will Hunting is a film that I remembered only for a few key scenes, since I had seen it so long ago: mostly the funny moments, like "How do you like dem apples?", or the "Afternoon Delight" scene.

But it's not hard to see how it ended up with nine Oscar nominations, even in a year dominated by the more technically expansive Titanic and L. A. Confidential. Danny Elfman's austere score plays nicely off of the many songs contributed by the late Elliott Smith (whose career also took off thanks to this movie).

While our good old Van Sant expressiveness occasionally takes hold of the lens, such as in the early fight scene, Good Will Hunting is still by far his most accessible film this side of Finding Forrester. Jean-Yves Escoffier's cinematography takes the odd turn into fractured-lens flashbacks, but stays clear and bright the rest of the time, and Pietro Scalia's editing is uniformly linear and well-paced.

It's the screenplay, on the other hand, that takes the most artistic indulgences- the film has the habit of pausing every fifteen minutes for a "For Your Consideration" type speech or fight scene. But the cast manages to make each of these scenes seem like something that could occur naturally, from the scenes reminiscent of Ordinary People between Will and his therapist to the the relationship melodrama.

Good Will Hunting was apparently originally written as a thriller, with government agencies trying to tempt Will into using his intellect to serve them- this seems to have been preserved in a long speech Will makes decrying international intelligence practices when the NSA offers him a job.

A constant undercurrent of the script is the class struggle that's such an indelible part of Boston's geography- the clash between the industry surrounding the universities and the slums on the edges so well-realized in subsequent films like The Departed and Affleck's Gone Baby Gone. Affleck's character has a monologue near the end of the film basically berating Will for nearly being stupid enough to ignore his ticket out of the lower-middle-class.

THE ENDING! SPOILERS!

After rejecting Lambeau's attempts to involve himself in the academic world and awkwardly breaking up with Skylar after she asks him to move to California with her, Will finds himself at a crossroads. After some soul-searching set to some music, we see him decide to take the NSA job.

Maguire, by now a friend through their sessions, finally breaks through in a climactic and Oscar-y scene in which they discuss Will's childhood, which was full of foster parents' abuse. Maguire tells Will "It's not your fault" more than a few times (ten, in fact), until he finally breaks into tears and gets the message.

Will drives to California, and leaves only a note parroting an earlier anecdote of Maguire's- he had to see about a girl, it says.

END SPOILERS


Overall: Should It Be Higher, Lower?

Good Will Hunting I think, is something of a modern classic. It's not a film a whole bunch of people openly rave about (in part because it's so remarkably earnest), but it's something nearly everyone saw and liked.

After re-watching it, I'd say higher.

The Legacy:

Well, there's the awards and stuff, and the careers therein launched, but I'd say a clearer mark of cultural influence is parody: presenting Good Will Hunting 2: Hunting Season


The Best Video Of It On YouTube:

Lots of choices on Youtube, for once, but in a pinch I'm gonna go with the scene where Robin Williams describes how he met his wife.



The abrupt shift to "No, I didn't rush the f*cking field, I wasn't there." gets me every time. And the way the clips of the game are worked in, and the overhead shots of the chairs in the office matching the bases- that's what's Van Sant brings to the table.

Leftover Thoughts:

-I love that this film has all the Academy pleasing speeches but also lines like "Can we get off of mothers? 'Cause I got offa yours last night!" in it.

-Actual Tagline for this film: Wildly charismatic. Impossibly brilliant. Totally rebellious. For the first 20 years of his life, Will Hunting has called the shots. Now he's about to meet his match.