jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Remember Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? The best thing about that movie (aside from the monkey brains) was the simple elegance of the plot. Indy’s in trouble, and every time he escapes, he finds himself in even more trouble — a cliffhanger blown up to feature-length. The Bourne series has extended a similar premise into three films: a man gets chased while he’s trying to find out who he is. Paul Greengrass’s The Bourne Ultimatum is the leanest and most exciting of the series yet, a chase movie of breathtaking purity.

We all know the nightmarish premise from our dreams — what it feels like to be Jason Bourne, perpetually running. Sure, he can take out a dozen goons in hand-to-hand combat, fool the spooks at Langley and drive a totaled NYPD cruiser through crosstown traffic backwards, but he only displays a sum total of three character traits. No wonder everyman Matt Damon is perfect for the role — anybody can project themselves onto this bland cypher (and I mean that in a good way.) Motivation and character are boiled down to bare bones; the film begins mid-chase, dispenses with opening credits altogether, and even if the action slows down for a moment of shaky respite, the pseudo-documentary camera never stops bopping and weaving.

That pseudo-documentary camera is controlled by director Paul Greengrass, whose exceptional talent lies in relaying complicated second-by-second events, often in disparate places and connected through an array of high-tech gadgets, with precision and an eerie sense of reality. At his best — like in a bravura sequence in Waterloo Station — Greengrass can make you feel omnipresent. I admired the technique in the historical reenactment Bloody Sunday but found it disconcertingly out of place in the gratuitous United 93. In the Bourne films, we get to enjoy the filmmaker’s prodigious skills without any of the baggage. The thriller is his natural home, and The Bourne Ultimatum is a thriller stripped to its essence.

Madrid, London, Tangiers and New York City are the settings for the film’s setpieces, and Albert Finney, David Strathairn, Julia Stiles, Scott Glenn, and Joan Allen co-star. As usual, great local talent supplements the cast, including Paddy Considine and Daniel Brühl (Goodbye Lenin), who has a short scene as Franka Potente’s brother. Among the film’s highlights are an almost unbearably intimate hand-to-hand fight to the death that ends in stunned silence and makes the “seriousness” of Casino Royale look sentimental. Speaking of Bond: The Bourne Ultimatum shows just how slack and self-satisfied the much-praised Casino Royale really was. Bond has the glossier locations, juicier women and flashier cars, but in a fight, Bourne would slit 007’s throat and make off with the suitcase nuke before Bond had time to put down his martini.

The Bourne Ultimatum. Paul Greengrass, 2007. ****

This movie stayed with me, in the way a kielbasa can be said to “stay with you” when you toss it after a night of binging on Jever at the Bohemian Beer Garden. I wrote one grouchy reviewlet for About.com, mainly about Eva Green, and to this day, the hate mail keeps coming. The funny thing is, if I trash an obscure French movie, nobody cares, but James Bond? Uh oh: attacks left and right– and that’s just the public insults. With a blizzard hitting New York, I gave Casino Royale another chance. And guess what? It doesn’t look nearly as good at home as it did at the Ziegfeld, and it’s still a disappointment.

It didn’t have to be that way. Bond 21 starts out great and shows the potential to become the best in decades. Craig’s a sexy brute, he’s got chemistry and snappy dialogue with Eva Green, stunts and plot are down-to-earth, the villain (After the Wedding’s Mads Mikkelsen) is creepy but believable. With the most human touch since On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Casino Royale reinvents the iconic character and almost manages to transcend the franchise’s formulas.

Almost. In the final third, somewhere around the time an Aston Martin flips on a country road and the main villain gets whacked by someone who is not our hero, the movie flies out of control and wrecks, too. Maybe it’s the poker-table poisoning, which doesn’t move the story along one bit, or perhaps it’s the dull respite on Lake Como– but if you expected a grand finale, you’re in for a letdown: there’s lots of gambling left after Bond defilibrates himself, but the only remaining action scene is a rummy fistfight in a collapsing building.

And what about Vesper? A real Bond woman, finally, but she’s killed off in a way that makes no sense. She betrayed Bond but also saved his life, so he can be sad and angry at the same time? I suspect that Paul Haggis, listed as third screenwriter, is responsible for botching this. After all, Crash is full of stuff that doesn’t add up. If somebody could explain to me why exactly Vesper has to die, I would be most grateful.

Until then, sad and angry is how I feel about the last half hour of the Casino Royale. A lot of critics and irate critics-of-critics seem to react to what this movie could have been rather than the wasted opportunity it turned out to be. Casino Royale is and always will be a two star movie.

Casino Royale. Martin Campbell, 2006. **

• Rotten Tomatoes: a stunning 94%
• Previously on Muckworld
• The Dreamers

From 1950 until the Wall came down, the East German Ministry for State Security–cutesified to “Stasi“–spied on anybody suspected to be an enemy of socialism. Through an extensive web of informants, the Stasi created a society steeped in surveillance on a scale that wasn’t completely revealed until the files were made public after reunification. So far, movies about life in the GDR, such as Goodbye Lenin, tended to be bittersweet satires. With his award-winning and Oscar-nominated The Lives of Others, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck takes a hard look at a country where a mind-boggling one in fifty citizens spied on the rest.

• Full review at About.com

Das Leben der Anderen. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006. ****
[tags]film, 4 stars, germany, east germany, spies, surveillance, communism, florian henckel von donnersmarck, berlin[/tags]

Pretty good. Robert De Niro directs a terrific cast in a story that outlines the creation of the CIA from the thirties to the Bay of Pigs, with Matt Damon as stoically loyal spy. Angelina Jolie, Alec Baldwin, William Hurt, Billy Crudup, Timothy Hutton, Keir Dullea, Joe Pesci, John Turturro, and Michael Gambon make the nearly three-hour running time fly by, and it’s not until afterwards that you wonder about certain plot points. And how often do you see two movies on the same day where people try to buy their way out of Berlin by selling rocket scientists? Opens December 22.

The Good Shepherd. Robert De Niro, 2006. ***

[tags]film, 3 stars, spies, robert de niro, angelina jolie, matt damon, alec baldwin, william hurt, billy crudup, michael gambon, rocket science, cia, cuba, berlin, russia, cold war, world war ii[/tags]

Everybody’s wondering whether or not Daniel Craig makes a good James Bond, but of course he’ll do nicely. The truth is, the role of 007 doesn’t really take much more than a cold stare and the capacity to look snazzy in a dinner jacket. The real question: what about Eva Green? We’ve adored the French ingenue since her debut in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, and truth be told, she was the real reason we attended yesterday’s screening at New York’s Ziegfeld theater. Casino Royale starts out very strong, with gritty bathroom fights and a breathtaking, Ong-Bak-inspired chase through a construction site.

Just when the film starts losing steam, Green appears to save the spy from his own smugness. As Vesper Lynd, the smart but reserved accountant who lords over Bond’s finances while he plays high-stakes poker for terrorist funds, Green’s not only the most intriguing Bond girl since Sophie Marceau, she’s also the most important since George Lazenby got hitched to Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Their banter’s charming, the outfits are glamorous, the villian’s creepy, and the locations are splendid as always (even if they borrow Natalie Portman’s space retreat from Attack of the Clones.)

In other words, the ingredients are right, and Casino Royale had the potential for a truly great Bond movie. The franchise, which is really an endless series of remakes, always tends toward bigger, louder, and more cartoonish installments (Die Another Day was a superhero comic book), and every decade or so, the producers feel obliged to dial down the nonsense and reintroduce grit and a real sense of danger. Director Martin Campbell succeeds on this score, but he doesn’t know when to stop.

If Casino Royale had kept to a lean, mean 90 minutes, it could have been the perfect James Bond flick. But it just keeps on going, and after two and a half hours, all the drama and tragedy Campbell is obviously aiming for have bled from the movie, leaving us with nothing more but a headache and the familiar catchphrase. You’d be better off–and you’d see more of Eva Green–if you just rewatched The Dreamers, twice.

Casino Royale. Martin Campbell, 2006. **