Critical Film Condition

This is an easy movie to review, mainly because in all it’s promise of complexity, “Duplicity” is just a funny romantic comedy with some twists along the way, but nothing that will leave the audience flabergasted (did I spell that right?).

Julia Roberts and Clive Owen play retired secret agents who plot to use their skills to steal a secret product from a cosmetics company to sell the patent and make millions. One works for one company, owned by Tom Wilkinson’s character, and the other one works for Paul Giamatti.

Acting-wise, it excells, not due to its main stars, but because Giamatti and Wilkinson are a joy to watch. Roberts looks amazingly hot in her forties, and convincingly out-stages Clive Owen, who just does a decent job as the man who holds the remote at home, but gets the wife to chose the channel. But Paul Giamatti, who takes serious roles into sky-high acting nirvana, got a laugh from the whole audience when he was on screen. And Tom Wilkinson, who I am a personal fan, is the silent assassin with very limited screen time.

But the problem with “Duplicity” is that it is just fun. With a premise such as this, there was much more ground to explore than the simple, often-times predictable twists revealed through cheap flash-backs every single fucking time. I have what I have come to call a screenwriting curse: for a long time, no movie except “Watchmen” had a plot-twist that got me jumping from my seat, screaming hurray to the screenwriter. But in “Duplicity”, the whole audience was waiting for that moment, and it never came. The twist at the end might be surprising to some, but it still left me unhappy with how the plot developed.

And this doesn’t mean that “Duplicity” is a bad movie. It’s just that while pretending to be a “Romantic Spy Comedy”, it forgets the spy part and becomes something that Nancy Myers could have done with the same acting tallent. It is fun to see Roberts’ character take the wheel and make Owen’s feel like a dog on a leash (especially if you’re American and love the parallel between CIA and MI6), but, probably from the fear of overly confusing the audience, it stays at that.

[starreviewmulti id=1]

Release dates: USA & UK: March 20th, Germany: April 30th

Kristie’s take:

I like movies that have a sense of humor about themselves. And that is clearly what sold it to me – aside from the cast and the acting. The ubiquitous Tom Wilkinson and the unerring Paul Giamatti are a pleasure to watch and the chemistry between Clive Owen and the simply stunning-looking Julia Roberts works well. Writer/director Tony Gilroy has the whole “Balance of Power” thing down and though it does translate well into romance, though the rest of the story falls a little flat. But this is mainly a romance and a spy movie only by force of circumstance. And sometimes you just have to prioritize: Jason Bourne’s love interest just gets killed to he can brood and avenge – end of love story, start of major kick-ass retribution. In “Duplicity” two agents meet, sparks fly and then everyone plays everyone. And I like the fact that we are dealing with industrial espionage, hence the crappy sunglasses and bad accents. And my guess is that no self-respecting agent would wobble on cobblestone in wedges like that. (Guddy, how could you not notice those shoes!) And that is what makes it fun. It is a fortunate turn of events that Clive Owen gets to horse around playing offbeat James Bond agent characters (like in “The International” and “The Pink Panther”, etc.). It becomes him. And Julia Roberts is just a wonder: beautiful, smart and sexy.
Perfect date movie.

Popularity: 4%

Jason Bourne meets Michael Clayton. Sort of.

In “The International”, Interpol Agent Louis Salinger (Clive Owen) and Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Eleanor Whitman (Naomi Watts) are determined to bring to justice one of the world’s most powerful banks. Salinger and Whitman’s investigation takes them from Berlin to Milan to New York and to Istanbul. Finding themselves in a high-stakes chase across the globe, their relentless tenacity puts their own lives at risk, as the bank will stop at nothing – even murder – to continue financing terror and war.

It is a little ironic that this movie deals with a financial institution’s power display and illegal activities including money laundering, arms trading and the destabilization of governments in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis. Banks just cannot get a good rep these days, can they?

Director Tom Tykwer delivers a movie that has brains – it is logical and not totally predictable. Thank you!!! The photography is immaculate, the sound is outstanding, the acting is good and I also have to mention the inventive location scouting. It’s like a mini vacation.

“The International” also features a great score composed by none other than Tykwer (and not for the first time!) along with Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek (they also composed for “Run Lola Run” and “Winterschläfer”).

However the mixture of Michael Clayton and Jason Bourne could have made a better cocktail. This is a very sober movie and Clive Owens is nevertheless made for this role. Guts, but no glory. Armin Mueller-Stahl is exceptional as the old East German relic Wilhelm Wexler.

However, the most convincing argument for this movie is the shootout in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum. It is awesome (and I don’t use this word lightly!). For anyone even remotely interested in art, the sight of the interior of Wright’s creation, shaped like the top of a honey dripper, being blown to bits is nerve-cringing and electrifying.

Worth the ticket or rental!

Popularity: 5%

The Bourne Trilogy is really one of the easier franchises to review since the three movies (especially Supremacy and Ultimatum) are really one big block. There’s a leap in time, style and, more importantly, director from Identity to Supremacy, but that’s about it.

Now, I have to be very careful not to spoil plot points in this review, which is really hard considering that there’s a LOT happening all the time, but then again, I wouldn’t be much of a critic if I didn’t succeed at it, so here goes:

The story in the Bourne series begins in the Mediterranean Sea, when a fishing boat finds the body of a man in the water. The man (Matt Damon) is still alive, but has no memory of who he is or why he has two bullet-holes in his back. His only clue is a chip on his waist (like, under the skin on his waist) with a bank account number in Zurich… And all the skills he has, like expertise in fighting and everything that involves killing for that matter. He teams up with a German woman, Marie, who tries to help him remember all this stuff, while all of a sudden people show up trying to kill them.

This about sums it up for Identity, and this is about as much plot-related information I can give on all three movies. Bourne warns Conklin (Chris Cooper) in the end of Identity that if whoever he works for continues to hunt him down, he will bring the war to them. Supremacy starts two years after the first movie, and involves Bourne again being hunted down and staying true to his word: he calls Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) at one of the CIA divisions in New York and hauntingly tells her: “Get some rest, Pam, you look tired”, when all of a sudden it is revealed that he is watching her from the next building. But the brilliant thing is that Ultimatum starts six weeks before Bourne arriving in New York, namely one minute after the scene that preceded said telephone conversation, in Russia, still in Supremacy.

While “The Bourne Identity” is by far the weakest of all three movies, it still is an entertaining movie, essential for the viewing of parts 2 and 3. Doug Lyman (“The Bourne Identity”, “Go”, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”), while not as successful as Paul Greengrass (Supremacy and Ultimatum, “United 93”) in this trilogy, does manage to set a style that remains consistent, if not evolved, throughout the whole series. Identity is fast-paced, but it lacks in story development, something that happens often in action movies. While the situation does develop with Bourne hitting and missing with every attempt at finding out who he is, we certainly don’t get that feeling of closure. Character development is all but progressive, with love interests sparking out of thin air and information being handed out to the viewer in five-minute intervals. It might seem like I’m bashing the screenwriter here, but this is not the case. The screenplay is well put together, but after watching Supremacy and Ultimatum, you get my point. It is worth mentioning that Identity also has the lesser interesting story, mainly because it sets the field for the other two movies. It’s like Identity is a necessary evil for Supremacy and Ultimatum to be as good as they are. And while Doug Lyman set everything up, Paul Greengrass took control of a machine that was already in good motion and just inserted good oil and high-octane gas.

The acting in Identity also lacks compared to the other two. Matt Damon doesn’t feel like he is yet comfortable in the role of Jason Bourne, and Franka Potente was the right casting choice for Marie, but somehow doesn’t deliver. Chris Cooper succeeds yet again at being the bad guy who never looks like a bad guy, who sits in his CIA office ordering people to kill Bourne and progressively falling apart with every failure. Brian Cox and Julia Stiles have small roles, almost cameos, and while Cox never fails to please, even with such a small role, Stiles doesn’t even get a chance to speak.

“The Bourne Identity” is a fun, fast-paced action movie that just didn’t go the extra mile. It doesn’t smell good, but it doesn’t stink either. A good analogy would be the bronze-medalist at a competition: he did beat everybody else, but standing next to silver and gold, nobody really cares for him.

Enter “The Bourne Supremacy”, which could be considered the first chapter after the prologue that was Identity. Bourne is almost happy in India, still with no memory, but not being chased anymore. When he is threatened again, it triggers a motivation never seen in Identity, to find his wrongdoers and to find out who he is. Bourne realizes that as long as he doesn’t know who he is or who is chasing him, they will never stop trying. He is also framed for murdering two CIA operatives in Berlin by the same people who tried to kill him in India, making him both cat and mouse on his quest, and where Identity was unlucky because of the lack of information it could give to the audience, Supremacy takes bold moves in revealing just enough to stay interesting and set all the pieces for Ultimatum. While Supremacy is not much of an evolution in comparison to Identity, it is much better put together. The story is still a little convoluted, but that is because each piece The Bourne Trilogy is hard to fit into 120 pages of screenplay. There are so many characters that have to get their due development, and you need action scenes to keep the audience with you as well. In that sense, Supremacy is much better than Identity.

Damon now looks sure of himself in Jason Bourne’s shoes, Brian Cox gets more screen time and Joan Allen is a welcome addition to the cast. Karl Urban, who is not amongst my favorite actors, makes for a very cool, intelligent villain. I don’t want to drag much about the acting here, but the fact that it is so much better than in Identity is one of the main reasons why Supremacy is so much better.

And while the leaps are minor in acting and storytelling, technically they’re HUGE. Director of Photography Oliver Wood is one of the few crew members who worked on all three movies, but it seems that by working with a more competent director (sorry, Doug Lyman), his work shines from the second part on. The change in camera operator (Cameraman, if you will) from Adam Kowalski to Klemens Becker brings some freshness to the franchise, and Becker’s work is nothing short of amazing. Like with the movies, I am eager to just get to talking about Ultimatum, and there is not much more to say about “The Bourne Supremacy”.

“The Bourne Ultimatum” starts right after Supremacy. Sure, there’s the scene where he already is in New York, but Ultimatum starts six weeks prior to that, explaining how he got there. This development is so brilliantly put together that it ruins my chance at writing a good review because in revealing any information I would be spoiling the amazing plot the screenwriter put together.  What can be said about “The Bourne Ultimatum” is that it is, with lack of a better explanation, the best action movie to be released in recent memory, if not one of the best ever. It is already an amazing feat to have a movie that runs over two hours with few seconds to breathe from one action sequence to another, but the amazing thing is that they manage to do this while consistently developing the story further until climaxing in an amazing finale. Think about it: it takes a lot of people and time to make a movie, so a director’s job is not an easy one, and it takes a shitload of managerial skills to keep everything in check and some luck to get the planned result. Paul Greengrass is an amazing director, I’ll give him that, but he also got lucky, because it seems that EVERYTHING in “The Bourne Ultimatum” went according to plan. Most shots are from steadicams, with shaking and eveything you could wish for action and still, no shot is out of focus, no focus-pull goes wrong… And this happens more than you can imagine. Renny and I say, at often times, that Blu-Ray is no forgiving medium, mainly because every mistake becomes more evident due to high-definition. Then how come, with such complicated shots at every five seconds, that there are no notable mistakes by the camera operator in this movie. I shit you not, Renny at one shot went: “OH, THANK YOU, CAMERAMAN!!!!”. And do I even need to say much about the editing? The flow in this movie is just perfect… It could be too fast, it isn’t, but it isn’t slow… It is FAR from slow. No scene is longer than three seconds, which could make for a tiring experience… Naturally, it is not the case. Every line helps the plot in moving on, and every action scene is right where it should be. Every character gets his or her due screen time, not being over- or underused in any sense. It’s like the crew of “The Bourne Supremacy” got the job for “The Bourne Ultimatum” and said in a creative meeting: let’s just kick some ass. And this is exactly what they did. I mean, Supremacy is already an amazing technical achievement, but Ultimatum manages to take everything that made it a good movie and evolve it into something rarely seen in cinema, and then filling in all the gaps of things it lacked.

I’m dragging on… Back to the topic, Guddy, shut up.

The same cast members are back, with the addition of Scott Glenn, David Strathairn, and Paddy Considine… Again, each with their due time on screen and never deviating from the plot that started in Supremacy. Joan Allen and Julia Stiles play bigger parts (oh, crap, I can’t talk about it without spoiling the plot), not because they’re expensive actresses, but mainly because their characters bring forth the whole development in Ultimatum.

Even talking about Ultimatum is exhausting.

But, to recap everything, The Bourne Trilogy is one of the best franchises to greet the silver screen in a long time. Identity smartly sets the field for its better sequels, while Supremacy builds up the main character’s motivation and Ultimatum blows us away and kicks all naysayers that say that a good action movie can’t have good story development in the gut. It’s a rare case where every chapter in a franchise surpasses its predecessor in every aspect and it’s worth watching all at once mainly because with the plots of parts one and two fresh in memory, the already amazing part three becomes a much more entertaining and satisfying experience. If you’re not an action fan, watch it anyway… It’s just that good.

Popularity: 2%