Rating of
3/4
A great action movie hurt by bad photography
DB - wrote on 08/29/07
The third Bourne movie did a great job of wrapping up the story while providing all the action and chases that were in the previous two. While I enjoyed this movie a great deal, there was one aspect of the movie that made this movie difficult to watch, the photography.
This Bourne movie was the first one I got to see on the big screen. The other two I watched when it came out on DVD and when this movie came out I was hoping it'd be more like the first one than the second. For those of you reading this that have seen the first two movies you know what I'm talking about. The photography in the last two movies is shaky and often times unwatchable.
Being a camera man by profession, and a guy who edits video, and a regular joe who watches movies, I know what I want to see. I like to be able to understand what I'm seeing, I don't want to have concentrate all the time to try and figure out what's going on, trying to decipher one blurry image and then a shaky image. If Matt Damon is kicking someone's butt in a fight, I want to see how he's doing it. If there's a conversation where there are close ups of two faces, I want to look at their face without the camera shaking around. I don't like 1 second shots of a blurry, shaky, back of the head of Matt Damon.
I don't like jump cuts. Jump cuts are shots of video in succession where a character is walking in one shot, and then the very next shot is opening a door, it's not complete. It doesn't make sense. I'm not a dumb man, I realize that this was purposefully done to intensify the film, to make things seem more dramatic then they actually are. What ticks me off is that the first Bourne movie was done quite successfully, and this change was not only unnecessary, but quite dumb in my mind.
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the movie, but I don't like going to a movie and leaving with a headache. This was probably the best action film of 2007 in my eyes, but it was hurt greatly by this poor, poor choice in photography. It goes against everything I've learned in my profession, and whoever thought it was a good idea to go about doing this should be fired.
3/4 stars
Recent Comments
Allison - wrote on 09/29/07 at 10:18 AM CT
The Bourne Ultimatum Review comment
the first director of the bourne movies was good. the last two were done by a different guy. I have NO clue why. The first one was good. and I can't bear the thought of seeing the third one at the theater. How can people tolerate this? This ruins an otherwise perfectly good movie :) Thanks for sharing.
