I blame Bourne

Rating: 2/10 (20 March 2009)

Ever since the two last Bourne movies came out and made a bit of money, the film industry has suffered from a severe case of ADD. It now seems mandatory for directors to partake in the George Lucas "faster-more-intense" and Paul Greengrass "shakycam-mounted-on-top-of-paint-blender" schools of film making, only now it's called "contemporary gritty action." It seems like the whole movie was shot hand held with a 200mm lens, operated by a guy with Parkinson's disease. As icing on the cake, no cut is longer than three frames.
I guess the underlying logic is that this will make the movie more "real" and "documentary-like". The only thing it makes me feel is nauseous. I can't stand this trend in film making. To be honest, it feels like a cop out, like they can't trust their stunt team to do well enough, and have to shield their performance in shaky images and hysterical cutting. And surprise surprise, it turns out that the second unit director of this movie, Dan Bradley, worked on the last two Bourne movies.
But technical aspects aside, the story was less than engaging, which is a shame since I have an interest in the specific MacGuffin of the movie, having even written an academic article about it.
I think the main problem is that I don't really care about any of the characters. Craig may stare intensely and bite down as hard as he wants to, but I still don't really care about Bond. It's not that I don't like the Bond movies (I own all the other movies on DVD), I just don't buy this new story line where they try to make him into a sort of Bourne-light. I say let Bourne be Bourne, and Bond be Bond.
Olga Kurylenko sure is pretty to look at, but her character here is about as memorable as her character in Max Payne: one big yawn. As for Mathieu Almaric, he feels a bit too pathetic to be a criminal mastermind, although I like the whole thing that they don't give him an eye patch or scars, but that he's ordinary looking.
This was one incoherent mess of a film (what was the deal with the horse race?) that I'm not likely to watch again, nor am I likely to purchase the DVD.