THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM

Director: Some fat English bastard.
Starring: Editor Christopher Rouse, Matt Damon (sort of)

Well, it's a watershed moment for my little reviews, ladies and gentlemen. For the first time I am going to completely pan an immensely popular flick. The Bourne Ultimatum has a 94% Fresh rating from Rottentomatoes.com. I hated this film. Hated, hated, hated it. Oh, there have been other times I disagreed with the norm (I'd be a completely awful reviewer if I did nothing but agree with the consensus). For instance, I had serious misgivings about Fight Club, but in the end I still thought it was a 'good' movie. I thought aspects of it were horrible, while others were quite good. Okay, in a way I feel similarly about this film. It's just that the "parts" I hate in Ultimatum were so huge, so overwhelming, that I've rarely been more unhappy watching a movie.

In my review of The Bourne Supremacy I noted how much distaste I had for the choppy, quick-cut, no story, no sense, pure-action style Greengrass displayed in that film. I also noted that the film still had much to recommend. In this film I feel the same. We have moderately good acting (David Stathairn, Joan Allen, and Damon), although truth be told the actors don't really do any acting in this film. The are simply moving robots for Greengrass' style. There is no story here. There is no character here. At most there are 50 lines of dialog in the entire film. There are only pieces moving, jumping and jerking.

Okay, I'll bet you're getting the impression that I'm not happy with Greengrass in this film. I'll tell you why. I found the picture to be unwatchable. I don't mean bad, per se. I mean physically unwatchable. There (quite literally) was not a single shot in this movie that lasted over 3 seconds, and most were a second or under. This is not an exaggeration in any way. This is a literal description of Greengrass' style. There were over 10 times during the movie where I had to look away from the screen and close my eyes because the hyperactivity on screen was giving me eyestrain and a headache.

As an example of the awfulness, 2 characters site down to breakfast for 45 seconds (at the most). There were 20 cuts ladies and gentlemen. First we zoomed down to a closeup of the orange juice, and then back to Joan Allen's jawline, and then from above, and then from the perspective of the spoon on the table, and then rotating the room. I will go so far as to say that Greengrass choice was retarded. I can imagine no possible way to distance us further from the characters and story than this constant herking and jerking of the camera. My girlfriend swore to never watch another Greengrass movie again.

For my part, I swear to never watch another Greengrass movie again ... in the theater. I found Bloody Sunday and United 93 to translate much better to the tiny TV screen than to the big screen. And both of those films were also jittery and uncomfortable to watch for me at the cinema. But let me talk about scale here folks. Those movies were annoyingly jerky. This film is like some form of CIA psychological torture.

Because of this, I hated it. I hate Greengrass for doing it. You owe me $10, you fat, stringy-haired limey.

Standouts: A decent hyperactive bit of action. A few fun action moments.
Blowouts: The direction. Imagine Yoko Ono directing a spy film. There are people that consider Ono an artist (okay, a handful of people ...). Her screeching "songs" are quite similar to Greengrass' attempt at a movie.

Grade: D