The Bourne Legacy

Baby, We Were Bourne To Run
Or
Pursued By Our Inner Damons

The "Bourne" series laterals the ball to another player in The Bourne Legacy, the fourth film of the series, which, by now, has nothing to do with the Robert Ludlum books on which they are titularly based (which is fine, as I read the first one decades ago and found it one of the worst reads ever).

When last we left Jason Bourne, he'd jumped into the East River to make a desperate escape from his pursuer/handlers, a nice turnaround from when the series started with him being fished out of the water with no clue as to his identity.  We start there again, but this time, we're Bourne again in another body of water with Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) on a training mission way out in nowhere, Alaska (all the better to see Russia, apparently), while the events of the previous Bourne trilogy play out in the States, sending a panic through the intelligence community and an order to purge the Treadstone Project (or is it Operation Outcome...or Operation Blackbriar...only Tom Clancy could keep track of this...and then he'd start a book-series (ghost-written) on each one!).  Whichever project is being scorched to the Earth, the talents from the previous movies (Scott Glenn, Joan Allen, David Straithairn) are dealing with the ramifications of Bourne's re-appearance, another intelligence head* (Stacy Keach-welcome back, sir) puts another middle-management type (Edward Norton) in charge of damage control (an impossible task in any recent spy film).**

As it becomes readily apparent on Renner's training mission, we didn't know diddly about the Bourne project (whatever name it was), as there are other agents like him, who are not only trained, but drugged to enhance their physical endurance, but also mental faculties (take the green and blue pills, but the yellow one you should really take with water or it gets stuck in your throat, evidently).  Just as Cross is about to rotate stateside, he and another agent get a drone-launched nasty-gram stating unequivocally that the mission is over.

That's how it starts, and goes all over the world, subsequently, even while it doesn't really go anywhere.  Oh, things happen, and things explode and people run around a lot (Rachel Weisz is a really good runner, by the way), but it's mostly just movement without any story momentum.  Most movies have a beginning a middle and an end, but this one is content to merely have a beginning, a middle and a chase.  

Tony Gilroy (who cracked the code for the first film—taking the germ of the idea and stream-lining it into a bare essentials man-on-the-run movie—directed the brilliant Michael Clayton and the disappointing Duplicity, one of those "I-get-the-drift-but-it-doesn't-work" movies) co-wrote this one and directed, employing the same kind of Paul Greengrass "run and shoot" style, but taming it down a bit, so it can be followed, as opposed to experienced in barely discernible flashes.***  It's a risk because the Greengrass adrenaline-fueled style keeps one from asking too many questions about the slowing-down factor of injuries and leaps in story-logic.  All well and good, I suppose, but one still gets the sense that Legacy is half-baked, with the kernel of an idea, some complications to keep things from getting too stale and large holes in the script filled with "a fight breaks out," "a chase happens," and "hero jumps from a fire escape into a window."  These all happened in the previous films, but I'll be damned if I can remember which specific ones—I suspect the answer is: "All of them."  They all blur together as the most memorable things are the action sequences, and there's a remarkable...uh...consistency to them.  The stakes are only the agent's own and most of the film's have very little resolution to them.  Legacy has none.  It just ends.

While one can admire the proficiency with which it is done, there's nothing all that memorable about this one...or the last one.  Even with fresh faces and a new idea of two, it's the same old thing, hardly worth being "Bourne" at all.

The Bourne Legacy is a Rental

  * You know, one could make a case for the excesses of "Big Gov'mint" just by noting the cast of good character actors in the "Bourne" series and all the different intelligence branches and mid-levels.

** Who fixes things in these films-and why haven't the unemployment rates dropped as a result?

*** This helped by a change in the style of Dan Bradley, who seems to have taken a film directing class in the interim, because his second unit direction in the chase sequences actually have some shots that feature relationship perspective going so far as to even including both participants in the chase in the same frame.  That's some kind of break-through after his disastrous work on Quantum of Solace.

Searching for Bobby Fischer

"Searching for Bobby Fischer" (Steve Zaillian, 1993) There's an episode from "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" that's more than a bit absurd, but it has one good line in it. It centers around a baseball game among the crew-members, and while Captain Sisko patiently explains the rules to his Security Officer Mr. Worf, he tells the Klingon, "...the important thing isn't who wins, but enjoying the game." Worf looks at him a moment and says, "If that is true, then why do you keep score?"

Can't argue with that logic. Our culture (and not just our sports culture) is suffused with the "Win at all costs" mentality that has broken down our moral fiber. You can't blame Vince Lombardi alone. One must look at the business class who steal the same "Winning is the only thing" philosophy (and other absurdly inappropriate sports metaphors) to push their paeons to boost profits no matter who gets hurt in the scrimmage (One remembers the tapes of Enron shills guffawing over "granny in California" freezing to death). And there has been the same philosophy in politics as long as there has been politics. We're all about "losing gracefully" in this country. But it seems like "winning gracefully" went out with Christy Mathewson, in favor of the "Ty" Cobb philosophy of play of the spike-and-dance in the end-zone and the smash-dunk in the basket.

And you can't win in this country without crowing you're going to Disneyland.

"Searching for Bobby Fischer" is one of my favorite sports movies. And it's about chess—hardly a sport although you can never say it's not a competition. But the film is very much about sports, as it explores the competitive spirit, and gamesmanship, and being "a good sport," whether you're a winner or a loser. Based on the book by Fred Waitzkin about his son Josh's aptitude and passion for chess at a young age, and the care and nurturing of a savant, "Searching for Bobby Fischer" sounds like a snoozer (especially given it's about chess!), but it's anything but.

Fred Waitzkin (played by Joe Mantegna) is a sports-writer, and, like a lot of parents, his pathology is to re-create his glory days through the accomplishments of his child. A series of gifts of sports paraphenalia to son Joshua (Max Pomeranc) goes unloved, but a walk though Washington Square amid its chess-players catches his youngster's eye, and he begins a self-taught exploration of the game, gaining the attention of the trash-talking Vinnie (Laurence Fishburne), who thinks the kid's the "next Bobby Fischer." Good enough for Dad, who puts him in tournaments with other kid chess-players and their anxious fathers (among them David Paymer and William H. Macy), then enrolls him with a chess-master (Ben Kingsley) to improve his game and toughen his resolve. But, Josh' starts to lose, and his Mom (Joan Allen) and teacher (Laura Linney) express concerns that he may be being pushed too hard. Complications...and tough choices...ensue. Raising a kid is not like a chess game. There aren't any rules, and more often than not any child will be a few moves in front of you. And the mistakes are all too evident: there's the reclusive Bobby Fischer, who serves as mythic inspiration and cautionary tale; and there's the kid from the other side, untempered with a killing instinct and a sociopath's glint in his eye.

Zaillian, a gifted script-writer, takes a difficult text of intellect and psychology and makes a rousing film of it, gentle and tough. If he compromises at all, it's that he gets all of Josh's influences in the same room to kibbitz and try to "Obi-Wan Kenobi" winning strategies to him against "The Other," making it feel a bit too much like Luke "embracing the Force" to tag the entry port on the Death Star. But even there, Zaillian tilts it 90° with a move that simultaneously undercuts the suspense but heightens the stakes, while defining character through action and reinforcing the message of the movie. A moment of grace in a graceless world.

And, now, fifteen years after the movie, we know where Bobby Fischer was: criss-crossing the globe with his winnings, settling in those anonymous places by other chess-masters who could stand to be around him. He'd occassionally spew some anti-semitic venom into a world that no longer cared and had turned their back on him. Not that he could see—he'd already turned his back on humanity. He even wrote a congratulatory letter to Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. And he complained that he hadn't "received one thin dime for the totally exploitative Paramount Pictures 'rip-off' full-length feature film." He died of renal failure January 17, 2008 in Reykjavik, and on specific instructions only a hand-chosen few witnessed his interment. It was yet another "draw" for Fischer, proving once again you can win and lose simultaneously.

Towards the end of his life "Ty" Cobb was asked if there was anything he would have done differently, and he replied, "I'd have had more friends "

The Bourne Ultimatum

Bourne ...Again?

I read "The Bourne Identity" decades ago, back when there was still a "Carlos, the Jackal" wandering the Earth, discriminately causing focussed havoc and then disapperaring. No one had seen him. He had never been photographed, and his reputation as an international terrorist (back in the day, when it had an odd, ghoulish glamour to it) was known world-wide. I bought the book for the "Carlos" angle, and dove into it eagerly.

I hated it. One of the dullest "thrillers" I've ever read, it seemed like it would never end. I wanted to have amnesia just to forget it after finally making it to the last page. It was made into a Richard Chamberlain mini-series which I never saw, and then into a film back in 2002. At the time of its premiere, there was no feeling that it would amount to anything, after all, it starred Matt Damon as Bourne, and his last couple of movies tanked quickly. There'd been a ton of re-shoots and the opening delayed for six months. All bad signs.

So, when I finally caught up with it, I was surprised to find it a good, credible thriller. How? Tony Gilroy's screenplay threw out the book, and kept the "amnesiac assassin" part. Doug Liman's direction kept the thing moving, the fights were spectacular, and even the tired concepts like a car chase through Paris were done with a great deal of panache. It also had a great supporting cast with Famka Potente, Brian Cox, Chris Cooper, Julia Stiles and Clive Owen. Paul Greengrass followed up with an equally spectacular version of "The Bourne Supremacy" and he's the man in charge of "Ultimatum."

As an exercise in montage, it's absolutely amazing. I rarely saw a shot held for more than five seconds. Greengrass has such a command of what he's shooting and is such a whiz supervising the cut, that you get just enough information to propel you forward--no more, no less--but you never lose a sense of where things are, and the danger the protagonists appear to be in (as opposed to, say, Michael Bay who cuts just as much but never with the discipline of story-telling that Greengrass does). Case in point: there's a long, protracted fight (of course--one of several) in a Tangier apartment. At one point, it heads into the kitchen most of it done in an overhead shot, presumably to hide the stunt-doubles. Now I was watching pretty closely, but, as is inevitable in the kitchen, a knife becomes involved, but I never saw it. I only HEARD it.

Just enough information to advance the plot. It is fascinating to watch.

But despite that, one has to confess that "The Bourne Ultimatum" has little to differentiate it from "The Bourne Supremacy," or "The Bourne Identity", other than there are key plot-points, like "The Story Begins" or "A friend is killed." This one picks up immediately where "Supremacy" ends. Some personal details are cleared up, but it's basically "run to Moscow/London/Tangier/New York and avoid detection/fight/chase." All cleverly done, mind you...but it's barely different from what we've seen before. There is a resolution of sorts, which distinguishes this entry, but that's about it. And, amusingly, the whole thing wraps up with a circular story-telling logic that puts us right back to square one.

"It's over when we've won!" bromides David Strathairn's anti-terrorism "deep cover" head*

With all the room for a sequel that this movie provides, I guess we haven't won yet.

"The Bourne Ultimatum" is the cheapest matinee you can find.
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Now, to be perfectly silly, here is the chance that the Producers had to have a hit song by changing the title to "Bourne 3." My lyrics for the Main Title song are as follows (to the tune of "Born Free")

Bourne "3"
As "3" as a trio
With fights of such brio,
Bourne "3," just like "1" and "2"

Bourne "3"
The Bourne Ul-ti-ma-tum
Not hard to cre-ate 'em
Just change the cars and locales

Bourne "3"
'cuz trilogies make dough!
The box-sets are in the store
in time for number "4!"

Bourne "3"
The last one that I'll see
It just don't intrigue me
Un-less it's freeeee!

* It's another great cast with Joan Allen and Julia Stiles returning--Greengrass makes maximum use of Stiles' lack of expressiveness--Scott Glenn, and Albert Finney, and a seemingly endless supply of stunt actors who look convincing carrying a gun.