Wednesday, January 30, 2008


Now THAT'S a movie villain!
MY burgeoning DVD collection finally burst the capacity of its cheap plastic stacking system following the impulse buy of the latest adventure of rogue former CIA agent Jason Bourne.

But I'm sure I missing something that everyone else seems to be clued up about regarding the Bourne Ultimatum.

It was a thoroughly entertaining film - but a few minutes after the credits rolled I felt dissatisfied. It wasn't a brilliant film, but everyone else tells me it is.

I ran through my usual mental checklist of ingredients necessary for a brilliant film and came up with a few reasons why the Bourne Ultimatum may not be brilliant.

My Brilliant Film Checklist:
  • Was it directed by Paul Verhoeven? No.
  • Did any of the action take place in a solar system different to our own? No.
  • Was any planet nuked from orbit? No.
  • Were there any really cool spaceships? No.
  • Was it Starship Troopers? No.
  • Were the villains of alien origin or result of toxic/nuclear accident? No.
  • Did the villains have acid for blood and/or lots of sharp, prominent teeth and a bad attitude? No.
  • Were there any British gangsters/football hooligans/angry Spartans? No.
Hmm, 'nul points' so far from the Sussex jury.
Moving to my secondary list, Mr Bourne staged a late rally:
  • Was a Guardian journalist properly ventilated in public? Yes.
I didn't say the secondary list was a long list.


It's been a long time since I saw the first two Bourne adventures and they have blended into one film in my mind - to be joined by film number three. Bloke with amnesia kills many people people as he tries to work out who he is and the real baddie is the US Gummint which created him and now want to silence him.

Nothing too wrong with that. Swap the various US and European locations for a distant galaxy accessible only via sentient spaceship and swap CIA hunters/assassins for bug-eyed, mutant, ray-gun armed freakazoid - and it could have been a winner!