Finally, a decent Ludlum flick!

Rating: 10/10 (4 January 2013)

Here's the lowdown: (a) I liked this movie a lot, (b) liked it better than even The Bourne Identity, which was the only moderately likable movie in the first trilogy anyway, and (c) thought that it was much more in the spirit, if not in the plot line of Ludlum's books. Here's a bit of rationale for these statements. First of all I actually read the original novels, and the Jason Bourne of the original trilogy of movies had little to do, except for general plot-points and miscellaneous McGuffins with Ludlum's. The novels were completely perverted in the scripts when they killed off Marie in The Bourne Supremacy. She was such an integral part of the life of the Jason Bourne character of the novels that I was totally flabbergasted at the screw-ups with the scripts. Then there were Matt Damon and Franka Potente, neither of whom came even close to being the Jason and Marie of the novels. Nothing against Damon and Potente per se; they just didn't fit. Period. And then came Jeremy Brenner and Rachel Weisz and it was like "WOW! They did something right for once." Maybe the plots weren't even close to anything Ludlum, but the characters certainly were much, much more like the Jason and Marie I recall from the novels. And characters are, after all, at the heart of everything. Plus, of course, the awfully pretentious and thoroughly nauseating Greengrass cinematography was gone, and so we ended up with a truly enjoyable flick. And, no, I definitely do NOT want to see a movie where Damon joins Brenner. In fact, here's a chance to pick some storyline from the original novels and let Brenner and Weisz run with it. And keep her alive for goodness' sake!