Monday, December 20, 2004

The Bourne Supremacy

I'm not a big Robert Ludlum fan. I've read several of his novels, but I always have a little trouble getting through them. A while back we watched THE BOURNE IDENTITY with Matt Damon, though, and I thought it was okay, lots of runnin' and shootin' and fightin', an agreeable way to spend a couple of hours. Tonight we watched the latest one, THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, and again, it was okay, but I don't think I liked it quite as much as the first one. I had trouble following the plot (not necessarily the fault of the movie, mind you), and I really dislike the way the action scenes were filmed, mostly in close-up, with a jittery camera and extremely quick cuts. The end result is that the viewer (well, me, anyway) has a hard time telling what's going on. Hold the damn camera still for five seconds, already!

By the way, from what I've read about these movies, they have little or nothing to do with Ludlum's novels except the titles and the concept of an amnesiac assassin. I wouldn't know, since the Bourne books aren't among the few of Ludlum's I've read.

The past couple of days have been spent working and running errands, nothing worth writing about. I've been reading stories from the Mountie anthology and the issue of MAX BRAND'S WESTERN MAGAZINE that has the REH story in it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Why is it that nobody can film action scenes any more? They're all quick cuts, all close-in shots, and I can never tell who's doing what to whom. The action is more like a blur than a well-filmed scene. It's something that's been irritating me since GLADIATOR for sure, and probably before that.

Actually some people can still film action scenes. The movie HERO has some great ones, and I'm really looking forward to HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS.