Category: Tony Gilroy

THE BOURNE SUPREMACY, THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, THE BOURNE LEGACY, JASON BOURNE

By Marc S. Sanders

Sometimes the same old thing is all we want, right?  It’s like comfort food.  That’s what the Jason Bourne films offer.  The first time (The Bourne Identity) it is original.  The second time (The Bourne Supremacy) it is familiar.  The third time (The Bourne Ultimatum) it is what we expect.  When you get to the fourth and fifth time (The Bourne Legacy and Jason Bourne), well then perhaps you’ve overstayed your welcome.

The second and third films in the Matt Damon action series function as one long four-hour film.  They are absolutely gripping in high octane, fast cut editing, pulse pounding music from James Newton Howard, and taut direction from Paul Greengrass.  They work because at least two thirds of the material is shown through the eyes of the former assassin Jason Bourne who is trying to learn of his past and who he worked for and why.  Plus, though he may hide deep undercover on the other side of the world in places like populated India, he only resurfaces when he discovers someone is trying to kill him.

The other third of these two pictures function on the other side of the coin with clandestine departments within the CIA who only consider Bourne being alive as a threat to the integrity of their black operations.  He must be eliminated.  There are great acting scenes with Joan Allen first up against an intimidating Brian Cox, and later she’s going toe to toe with David Strathairn.  If you are not part of the chase for Bourne, then you are engrossed in the cause these three supporting players offer with government politics and debate.  With each passing film, it’s an old, grey haired white gentleman in a suit who is insistent on eliminating Bourne and anyone who he associates with.  This started with Chris Cooper in the first film followed by Brian Cox (my favorite) over to David Strathairn.  The baton is then passed to Albert Finney.  A new film moves over to Edward Norton and then Tommy Lee Jones.  Scott Glenn and Stacy Keach are in the recipe too, but they are not as prominent.  All these guys start to look alike and when you watch the films in succession, one after the other, like I recently did, you start to question when this actor and this actor entered the fold.  Best way to describe it is that it is a ladder climb.  There was one guy in charge, then another above him and so on.

The appreciation for the Bourne series comes mostly from its action and the absolute cleverness of its hero.  Jason Bourne functions with ease about staying one step ahead of those trying to kill him.  They think they have a lead on him, but in reality, he has the lead on them.  Do you know how satisfying it is when he calls these people to talk to them and they play dumb? Jason will simply say “If you were in your office right now, then we would be having this conversation face to face.”  Moments like this are what gets an audience to clap and cheer.  The old white guy has been duped.

The action works because, once again I lay claim to the lack of CGI.  So, the overabundance of car chases seems nerve wracking like they are supposed to.  That door on that car is actually getting bashed in.  That taxi cab is really getting t-boned and turning into a 360 tailspin.  Jason can grab a seatbelt, lie down on his side and when the car careens over the barrier onto the landing fifty below, upside down, I’ll believe he gets out with only just a slight limp and a dribble of blood on his brow.  Only Jason Bourne can drag a wrecked rear bumper on a stolen police car through a busy Times Square and bash an SUV into a concrete barrier.

Fight scenes are not just fight scenes in the Bourne films.  It’s not just fists and punches and karate kicks.  Creatively speaking, the films construct their fight scenes to have the hero arm himself with a ball point pen or a magazine that’s wrapped up ready to wallop an opponent in the nose.  I’ll never forget when my colleague Miguel and I saw Ultimatum in the theatres and witnessed Jason punching a book into the face of a dangerous bad guy.  How many times have you seen a guy get punched in the face?  How many times have a seen a guy punch a book into the face of another guy?  There’s a difference. 

Matt Damon has been quoted as saying he believes the Bourne films carried the least amount of dialogue for him to memorize.  Yeah.  That’s likely true.  These films are visual feasts.  They rely on watching Damon move.  They are paced by how he walks, drives a car or tinkers with props.  Even how he listens and observes move with a kinetic progress. 

The locales are spectacular, spanning the globe from India, to Russia, to London, to Morocco, to the Philippines, and on to New York City and Las Vegas.  Following the first film, Paul Greengrass directed three of the next four.  (Writer Tony Gilroy directed the fourth film, The Bourne Legacy with Jeremy Renner taking the lead while Damon’s character was only talked about.) Each film takes every advantage of the atmosphere, using the overpopulated extras as obstacles and means to hide and weave away from the antogonists while on foot, behind a steering wheel or saddled upon a motorcycle.  Greengrass practically invents the concept of putting the viewer so much within the environment, you can almost smell the diesel or the food trucks within the area.  Zoom in overhead shots offer quick glances of the playground and traffic we are engrossed in.  Approximately twenty-five minutes within the center of The Bourne Ultimatum go by with no dialogue as Jason Bourne pursues a bad guy through a labyrinth of apartment tenements and rooftops, while the bad guy pursues actor Julia Stiles.  Finally, when all three catch up to one another, with a leap through a window, do you let out the deep breath you never realized you were holding on to. 

The first three films in the series (Identity, Supremacy and Ultimatum) work as a tight trilogy.  Each film ends with hanging threads to consider and lend to the next film.  By the time Ultimatum concludes, you feel as if all that needed to be told has been covered.  The next two (Legacy and Jason Bourne) function as cash grabs for the studio.  Legacy is entertaining and it boasts a good cast with Jeremy Renner and Rachel Weisz trying to outrun the government adversaries.  It hinges on operating as parallel material that occurs in the prior Damon installment.  While Jason Bourne is being pursued, this is happening over here.  It’s not unwatchable, but it is also truly unnecessary as it doesn’t advance the universe of the series at all.  A thrilling motorcycle chase closes out the film, but it’s a retread of what we’ve seen before.  It gets old quickly.  The film demonstrates that guys like Jason are trained to become dependent on drug enhancements for their highly trained arts of warfare and instinct.  Renner’s character is just another kind of Jason Bourne.  I was more impressed when I thought Jason was just a highly skilled fast learner to all that he’s capable of.  If you tell me blue and green pills lend to what he’s capable of, well then, he’s not much of a superhero in my eyes anymore.

With the final film, Jason Bourne, Greengrass returned to the director’s chair and Damon agreed to come back (paycheck had to be right, I’m sure), though he was significantly greyer and older than his prior films.  It was a weak return.  Just when we think Bourne has learned everything he needed to know and he could now live comfortably underground as a street brawler for bucks, he is informed that his deceased father knew and did some things for these secret agencies that put Jason on this path of special operations.  It doesn’t hold much weight and the payoff is nothing special.  Another car chase occurs in Vegas that appears nearly shot for shot similar to what we already saw in Damon’s prior installments. 

I wrote in an earlier review of The Bourne Identity, that Matt Damon works so well in the role because he’s such an unexpected surprise.  He’s not the muscle guy like Stallone or Schwarzenegger.  He comes off common.  In the first three films, he’s simply a kid.  When you place him in action or see how he gets the drop on a bad guy who is surveilling him, it is so satisfying.  The Bourne films work best with the locales they choose to shoot from.  Bourne will spy on his pursuers from a rooftop building across the street from where they are.  This is inventive filmmaking not just found in the pages of the script.  Paul Greengrass strategically shoots his players.  Director Doug Liman planted the seeds for this series’ potential (The Bourne Identity), very loosely based on the Robert Ludlum novels with creative adaptations from Tony Gilroy, primarily.   Greengrass enhanced the characters and their motivations by use of scenic locales, skillful shaky cameras to make it look like the audience is running at the same pace of Bourne and his adversaries, and quick cut, real time editing.  He applied this approach to his 9/11 film United 93.  The last two films are good even if they seemingly peter out the series, but overall, the four sequels hold up very well. 

If you’re asking, the best of the series is The Bourne Ultimatum, followed very closely by The Bourne Supremacy.  Either way, no matter which film you’re watching, you’re in for a good time when Jason Bourne shows up on the grid.

THE BOURNE IDENTITY

By Marc S. Sanders

Doug Liman’s The Bourne Identity is the story that occurs after the story, with a compellingly determined performance from its lead Matt Damon.

A man floating in the rain swept Mediterranean Sea is recovered by a fishing boat. Two bullets and a capsule containing a Swiss bank safe deposit box number are removed from his back. The man also has amnesia as he can’t recall his name or background or why any of this has happened. Yet, he does remember his fighting skills, weapon handling (even if it’s a BIC ball point pen) and strategic abilities. Eventually he recovers a lot of cash and passports from the box, but he leaves the gun. (No cannoli to take.)

The agency that does know what happened, code name “Treadstone” developed secretly by the CIA, is represented by a frazzled administrator named Conklin, played well by Chris Cooper. Apparently this mystery man did not carry out an assassination as orchestrated and now this assassin must be located and terminated or Conklin will have a lot of explaining to do to Abbott, another, more calm, authority played by favorite character actor, Brian Cox. However, this mystery man is Jason Bourne, and he is not going to be easy to kill or outsmart by the ones who essentially trained him.

Famke Potente portrays a gypsy that Bourne pays to escort him by car through Europe as he tries to remember and uncover the truth. She’s also very good, as the inevitable brief romance brings just the right dimension to the characters. Now there’s something at stake amid the danger.

There’s not much story to this film. In fact, there’s not much story to the sequels that followed. Liman set the standard for the Bourne films that director Paul Greengrass eventually took over. Just keep the pace at high octane. Crash the cars, break the bones, fire the guns. Only make sure Bourne just gets a cut on the head and recovers with a limp. Nothing more. We know that Bourne will never die. The fun is in how he manages to stay alive following one dangerous encounter after another.

Damon is surprising in this first entry in the series. Perhaps that’s because he’s not a repeat action star like Stallone or Schwarzenegger. He was Good Will Hunting!!!!! So, in this film, he’s got the college prep appearance and walks like a short lightweight boxer. I think that’s great. When we see him disable two policemen early on, it is literally jaw dropping. Liman presents the unexpected in Damon’s performance because the plot can’t offer much more development.

The Bourne films remain as one of the best action series of all time. If anything, I think the taxpayers are getting ripped off by the clandestine shenanigans happening within the CIA. The CIA was meant to be secret. However, “Treadstone” better be MORE secret. That way our secrets can hide our secrets. Right? Wait, what? Forget what I said.

As each movie is happy to demand from an authority in a suit, “Find me Jason Bourne!”

MICHAEL CLAYTON

By Marc S. Sanders

The corporate world can be murder sometimes.  Just ask a well known “fixer” like Michael Clayton. 

George Clooney plays the title role that’ll leave your head spinning while watching the film, and thereafter keep you thinking about how frighteningly true much of what you’ve seen, in this fictional account from master writer Tony Gilroy, could potentially be all too real.

Michael Clayton is a lawyer who does not practice law but rather “fixes” sticky situations for his law firm.  When the attorneys of the firm don’t have enough imagination to swindle their client from bearing responsibility or surrendering to guilt, they turn to Michael.  Michael will know what to do.  Ironically, Gilroy’s script (which is also his directorial debut) will have you believe that Clayton is at a career midlife crisis moment where he understands that nothing really can be fixed or simply swept under the rug.  Not even money can buy any of us out of a guilty situation when there’s nothing to work with but the black and white facts of actual guilt.  Early on in the film, Michael explains to an aggravated high-priced client that there’s no getting out of the fact that a late-night hit and run is nothing else but a late-night hit and run.  Can’t undent a car.  Can’t bring a bicyclist back to life.  Can’t fix what is permanently broken.

Moving on to the main storyline will demonstrate the same ideal.  If knowing admission of guilt and wrongdoing is documented on paper in plain English, then there’s no getting around this.  Moreover, there’s no getting around the fact that one of the best lawyers in Michael’s firm, played expertly by Tom Wilkinson, is consciously arrested in his own guilt of ethics violation.  To be considered one of the greatest lawyers in the country, would you factor in how to squeak out a win at no costs? Would it be when you can accept that your own client is guilty of wrongdoing and help them from that point?  I don’t know.  I’m not a lawyer.  The point is that Tony Gilroy implies that Wilkinson’s character, Arthur Eden, was once considered among his peers in high esteem in order to earn the reputation he has. Then another way when perhaps that reputation was based on actions not so honorable.  As Arthur struggles with this conundrum, maybe it’s only telling that his wealthy corporate client, an environmental weed killer manufacturer and his law firm colleagues easily think it’s nothing like that.  Arthur must be literally losing his mind.  It’s the only explanation.  He’d have to be crazy to literally strip his clothes off in the middle of a witness deposition, and later run after the witness in a freezing cold parking lot, while stark naked.

The pawn of the corporate client is represented by a shark named Karen Crowder (a brilliant Tilda Swinton, putting on the American Ivy League grad persona).  Karen is only insecure in how capable she’s actually considered when behind her closed doors.  She nervously practices what she will say at presentations for the corporation or interviews that hold her client in the highest regard.  She’s also desperate to maintain a calm and unpanicked appearance of this firm who clearly caused the death of many people that were exposed to their product.  Karen will make certain this knowledge never sees the light of day.  Karen talks to her mirror while stuttering over her lines.  By the way, if Karen was so confident in what her corporate client stands for, then would she even have a stutter to begin with?  This is where Tilda Swinton is great with Gilroy’s script.  What she knows would be the death of her career. Then again, this is her career we are talking about here. 

Tony Gilroy’s script is deliberately muddied in its first act.  Random scenes that carry no relevance to one another occur.  Michael sits at an underground poker table. Arthur spews off endless speeches that give a voice to madness. An army of lawyers led by a shrewd Sydney Pollack are up late at night sifting through piles and piles of documents.  Karen talks to herself while smoothing out the wrinkles of her suit while getting dressed in the morning.  Then a car explodes, and the movie sends us back in time to four days prior.  This might seem frustrating on a first viewing, but I urge anyone interested in seeing the film to be patient.  Gilroy demonstrates that if crime truly occurs within the offices of corporate high-rise buildings, then it’s not going to be anything but complex.  It’s only when it is gradually simplified like a math equation, do we see how justifiable the desperation of these crimes really are.  Murder and attempted murders and violations of law and ethics are committed in the film Michael Clayton, and yet no one is carrying a gun. 

This film boasts a brilliant cast ready for complicated characters.  Clooney is far from his charming other characters that evoke cuteness and handsome tuxedo clad appearances.  He’s a tired professional soul, exhausted on the heavy lifting he does for his firm and their apathetic clients.  He’s failed at his dream of running a New York City restaurant with his recovering alcoholic brother and he’s mounted in debt to loan sharks.  Wilkinson is old and past the age of winning at all costs.  He can’t sleep with the contributions he’s lent to criminals he’s legally served and rescued on paper.  Swinton is the younger one of the trio with a massively rich and successful future ahead of her, while holding on to the same mentality of what Clooney and Wilkinson’s characters once had.  The only issue is that maybe she’s taking a few too many steps way too far. 

Tony Gilroy has written brilliantly faulty characters who must function with strength, but are weakened by their lack in morale or inability to recover from never having morale, and the actors he’s directed in this film deliver the message sensationally.

Michael Clayton is a smart film, and Michael Clayton is a great, great film.