nice movie, but shaky cam makes the experience foul

Rating: 5/10 (21 September 2007)

I have seen the movie yesterday and because of the "to be expected" shaky cam, my expectations were low.
Many friends told me that the movie is intelligent and I wondered why. Bourne is quite clever, he solves his problems with force most of the time (come on, no funny Star Wars jokes now)and he always seems a tad ahead in regards to his opponents. Does that make an intelligent movie?
The movie itself is not intelligent. There are no surprising elements, you know who is good and who is bad from the beginning and after 5 minutes I already knew the ending. Despite of these facts, Bourne ultimatum is a rock solid movie, it goes by too fast to let you think too much of it.
So far, so good... I would rate the movie 7 or 8 stars,
BUT let us speak about a feature which finds its way into more and more movies, the "shaky cam"
I did not like the shaky cam in "the shield", I did not like it in Bourne 2 and because of this I was prepared for the worst (so I thought): So you make this Big Budget movie and you want to make it look like an amateur has filmed something with his mobile phone camera. Why?
The cam zooms straight in the faces till you can see even skin irritations. You have one cut in like every second. Maybe to show how "hectic" the situation is. But this makes the viewer think of the situation, because he cannot really see what is going on.
Let us take Bournes brawl with the agent in Marocco. You don't really see something of the fight, you don't know, who is superior, you cannot even see why Bourne wins the fight at the end. Was he just luckier or was he smarter or stronger? Only the "shaky cam" knows.
But while this fight is OK made and the chase above the roof tops of Morocco is quite OK, the car chase is just a bad joke. In no scene you can really tell who is driving where and from what direction someone is chasing. Hell, at the end of this chase, I don't even know if Bourne is pulling some clever stunt or the other agent is making a mistake. I just see Bourne taking his safety belt and ducking and Bourne is conscious again faster. Why is that?
A good movie shows a nice composition, well shot pictures, good fighting moves and interesting cuts. Bourne has neither of these elements. If a movie is shot similarly and I get to know about it, I will stay away from it, simple as that.
I could bear the "shaky cam" if the director would use it in some situations, but in the whole movie, it is just annoying and looks like it is shot from an amateur. Maybe the "shaky cam" is good for low budget movies. You can save some money and still make fights and car chases so shaky that the viewer cannot really judge if it is well done or in a bad way. But in a big budget movie like Bourne, an interesting part of the movies, the action scenes, loose my interest, because you cannot see what is going on.
Yeah, I know what you are going to say... the director uses the "shaky cam" to show how hectic everything is. You know what? A soccer match, is hectic, too, but if they are showing the matches in this way and I only see some trousers, hands and dirt flying around, only interrupted from some shaky shots to the audience that are happy about a goal, I stop watching soccer. If you like it, good for you, but when I have to think 90% of the time about something that does not even belong to the story, this cannot be right.
I really tried to be open minded about the style and the movie. But my opinion is firm now. A cam should be, like the score of the movie, be there to help the mood and the movie, but not be the main focus of my first view.
What a pity, Bourne is a nice movie (it does not belong in the IMDb top 250 though), but I have to take away 2 points for "shaky cam". Seriously, if you are a director and read this... stop this, thank you. We don't like it, it does not make the movie interesting, I hate it and it makes the movie annoying. Salt makes a meal taste better, but if you add to much to it, you ruin the meal and when you take as much as "shaky cam" in Bourne, it can even be a danger for your health.