Might as well have been directed by a monkey

Rating: Null/10 (13 August 2004)

Seeing The Bourne Supremacy today with its controversial can't-make-out-a-bloody-thing shaky camera work that deliberately obscures the action, I was reminded of 2001. What would happen if those apes found a movie camera instead of a bone? Would the results look just like The Bourne Supremacy?
Well, no, I think the monkeys would make a better fist of it. But I definitely got the impression that Monkey Boy didn't understand the first thing about movie-making or storytelling. Maybe a little bit more respect for the audience might be in order next time, Mr Greengrass. If we wanted to see nothing but blurs, we'd spin around in circles until we made ourselves dizzy, not waste £6.50 on an out of focus movie. It ain't art and it ain't funny, it's just a rip-off.
Grengrass has been getting away with this shoddy style for years in bad TV shows and dramas and seems unable to understand a) just how much more irritating it is when magnified 100 times on a movie screen; and b) that the more you use it, the less effective it becomes. It's certainly not realistic - in case he hasn't noticed, people's eyes adjust focus naturally, so the constant needless shifts of focus were just moronic and totally unjustifiable - and it really did feel that the whole movie had been shot by an epileptic monkey on roller skates. I feel sorry for Damon and the stunt team who saw all the hard work they put in that was wasted by the inept, amateur night direction. I really felt cheated out of £6.50. And the worst of it is that Monkey Boy Greengrass will probably get to ruin more movies in the future now. One thing - I know better than to waste my money on any of them now. This was a good movie ruined by a director with contempt for his collaborators and the the audience. Shameful.