3 is too much

Rating: 3/10 (27 October 2013)

Three stars? Maybe, but the third installment deviated in direction so much that it was distracting. I eagerly anticipated this third in a series I'd come to equate on a level of Bond films. But Greengrass's shaky-cam was ridiculous, amateur, contrived, pretentious and annoying. Pretty much the worst camera direction I've ever seen, and I've seen a zillion films. The boardroom scene, for instance, where the camera's off in a corner and shaking like a leaf while it looks at one eye of a person who's face is blocked by another's shoulder is, well, as I've already said.
Do I hate shaky-cam? Obviously. And second to that I hate choppy quick-frame editing. So what else is in this film? Yup. Fight scenes were once choreographed by real talent like Bruce Lee, now they're faked motions edited into a blur of sound effects and snap shots. It's lame to the point of insulting. This pap has been fed to enough doe-eyed kids that I fear the next generation will positively crave the stuff. Bye-bye realism.
I didn't walk out of the theater, though, there were still all those great locations I'd heard about. But where were they? Oh, the camera is doing close-ups in all the exotic locations they'd spent millions to film in. What an idiotic mess.