Wildly Overrated (spoilers)

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2004)

I'm a little surprised that reviewers are falling all over themselves to heap praise on this slick but trivial action flick. Sure, it isn't weighed down with moronic one-liners (i.e., ".... this!"). Matt Damon not only reinvents himself as an action star, but he seems to have created a new kind of action hero. He's not a musclebound engine of destruction; he combines vulnerability and sensitivity with tough-guy agility, and he's fun to watch.
The rest of the cast is good, particularly an almost unrecognizable Joan Allen.
However, the story is pretty thin. Plot points are telegraphed way in advance, and there's a routine quality to it that's all too familiar. Brian Cox must be getting tired of playing the heavy; this fine actor has done wonderful work in the past but there's little for him to do here except paint by the numbers. Ludlum's novel (an entirely different story), for all its faults, avoids the kind of stereotypical evil-boss-of-the-rogue-government agency that's become a tired staple of this kind of fiction.
Where the film really fails though is in the worst excess of quick-cut editing I have seen so far. This is getting to be a real problem in movies.
During the climactic car chase, it's almost impossible to follow the action (or to determine if there really is any). This is easily the blurriest, badly staged excuse for a car chase sequence I've ever seen. My friend, who generally likes almost any movie, remarked that it might be better on a small screen.
I noticed this also in "Chronicles of Riddick", where the fight scenes were quick-edited to the point of incomprehensibility. You know Vin Diesel is going to win all his fights, but how about some choreography to at least make us wonder how he's going to win? Watching the "Bourne" car chase not only made me dizzy but made me wonder if any actual action sequence had been staged.
This movie is O.K. but not an important film in any sense. The more I thought about it, the less impressed I was. I saw "I, Robot" last week and while that was hardly more original, the story did have more meat to it.