The Bourne series is that rarest of Hollywood commodities, a genre franchise with downhill, increasing commercial momentum and upmarket critical appeal. Swapping in Jeremy Renner for Matt Damon, and expanding the narrative playing field to tell a parallel story of intrigue and frightened governmental cover-up, The Bourne Legacy doesn’t miss a beat in doling out smart action kicks. It’s a fantastic piece of well constructed pop entertainment that has a certain air of erudite emotional remove, and doesn’t nervously or foolishly rush into revealing twists in order to satisfy or attempt to pander to impatient viewers.
Director Tony Gilroy had a hand in writing each of the previous Bourne films, and his chief value to The Bourne Legacy is as the architect of its expansive, chess board world. Abetted by the steely work of cinematographer Robert Elswit, the movie is of a piece with the other tony, slick, adult-market-minded films, Duplicity and Michael Clayton, on which Gilroy served as director. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Universal, PG-13, 134 minutes)
Daily Archives: August 7, 2012
Nitro Circus: The Movie 3D
Years ago, our minds warped by the spectacle of Dennis Rodman, Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mickey Rourke appearing alongside tigers and exploding soda machines in Tsui Hark’s certifiably insane Double Team, a friend and I jointly speculated that Hollywood was on a path to ditching any semblance of narrative genre filmmaking and just releasing a movie called Tricks and Stunts. A feature-length indulgence of the same-named stunt spectacular, which used its MTV show in 2009 to spark a string of bestselling DVDs and, eventually, a live show in Las Vegas, Nitro Circus: The Movie 3D is pretty much a realization of that theory.
Using the latest compact camera rigs and other innovations in 3D cinematography, co-directors Gregg Godfrey and Jeremy Rawle provide viewers with bucket-seat and bird’s eye perspectives of much spectacle and mayhem as Travis Pastrana, the decorated freestyle motocross champion who co-founded Nitro Circus and still serves as one of its merry ringleaders, and his cohorts engage in all sorts of bike-, auto- and skate-inspired shenanigans. The roster of stunts includes purposefully flipping cars, ramped jumps into various bodies of water, back-flipping bikes over a chasm between two 60-story buildings, and trying to land an elusive double back-flip on modified tricycles amongst the mulch mountains outside of Pastrana’s Maryland home. For more information, visit the movie’s website. Meanwhile, for my full, original review, from ShockYa, click here. (Arc Entertainment, PG-13, 80 minutes)
The Campaign
A hopelessly broad and undisciplined comedy that features a small handful of amusing ideas but otherwise evinces no great effort or intelligence, The Campaign represents a major missed opportunity for rich Stateside election year satire. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis each exercise their well-toned individual comedic chops, but director Jay Roach’s movie feels to its very core vague and scared of offending anyone, and therefore has trouble connecting in any meaningful way, no matter the heightened absurdity of its backdrop.
Loads of small narrative missteps and false details also add up. They make for a movie that feels generic and toothless instead of plugged in and alive. Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell’s script aims for big targets, grabbing a couple story beats from political scandals of the last several years, but it never roots down into the foibles of party politics. Instead, it opts to track swings in public opinion for the two candidates through polling response to exaggerated events, as with an uptick for Huggins related to an “accidental” hunting shooting. Unintentionally, this says a lot about the filmmakers’ regard for their audience. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., R, 86 minutes)