25th Hour (Spike Lee, 2002)

I continue to love Spike Lee's 25th Hour, one of his most shamelessly white elephant features (topped only by Miracle at St. Anna and, more positively, Malcolm X) but also one of his most affecting. Buoyed by a stellar cast, 25th Hour manages to walk its tightrope between an intimate portrayal of the crippling fear of consequence and a vaster portrait of its application to the September 11 attacks. The final, desperate fantasy alone rates among the best and most bravura work Lee has ever done.

My full review is up at Spectrum Culture.

Rise of the Planet of the Apes (Rupert Wyatt, 2011)

Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a fear du jour-updating reboot of the apes-take-over-Earth franchise, has just enough creativity in it that its problematic whole is all the more frustrating. The only actor who genuinely fits into his role comfortably is animated out of the picture, while a good third of the film feels like padding to establish questionable, simplistic motivation for a primate proletariat revolt. Yet when the film clicks, Rise of the Planet of the Apes finds a surprisingly effective tone between the sentimental and vicious.

Swapping out fears of nuclear holocaust for the less definite disease paranoia, Rise of the Planet of the Apes repositions the root of man's fall as the noble but misguided attempt to alter nature. Will Rodman (James Franco) is a scientist for a pharmaceutical firm who engineers a virus to repair the brain, effectively curing Alzheimer's and other brain-degenerative diseases. It's a lofty goal, and one that doesn't particularly need the addition of Will's Alzheimer's-stricken father (John Lithgow, making the most of an almost unwritten part) to sell the importance of such a breakthrough. But when an aggressive test chimp forces the closure of the research, Will secrets away the ape, Caesar, who inherited his mother's altered genes and exhibits intelligence even beyond that of a young human.

The Bourne Supremacy

A friend of mine commented on my review of The Bourne Identity that he would never watch the films because the sequels follow not the plots of Ludlum's books but stretch out the first book to fit the framework of the whole franchise. That might explain why plot takes a backseat in both of the sequels. Now, I can appreciate his feelings and of many other fans who might feel they lost the chance to ever see the books they enjoy on the big screen, especially a series as lauded as Ludlum's, so I hope he isn't too offended when I say that, from the bottom of my heart, I don't care. I don't care that Tony Gilroy decided to stick with the first book for three whole films, and I imagine I won't care when I finally read the books, no matter how much I love them. Why? Because with these sequels, Doug Liman, Paul Greengrass and Tony Gilroy made the best action films of the decade.

Greengrass takes over the director's chair for Liman, who still stayed on as a producer, to controversial results. Greengrass of course is the fellow to thank -- or blame, as many of us would -- for the rise of hand-held camera usage in major Hollywood films. His style of constant movement and breakneck editing makes even scenes of dialogue or a man packing a bag as visceral as a shootout. Greengrass' style spawned a wave of imitators, some of which benefited from this style (Collateral) but mostly detract and annoy (Public Enemies, Quantum of Solace).

The problem is that no one has Greengrass' knack for using this technique. His editing creates a disorienting, visceral experience, but he knows to give us at least some clue of what's going on. His restlessness comes with a vague hint of restraint, and his most interesting shots contain not action but dialogue, for he loves to quick-zoom on his actors' faces, better to read their buried emotions. I was also taken with a tracking shot through a subway that was so stable I pegged it as a Steadicam shot, only for the frame to bounce ever so slightly, signifying as a regular hand-held shot like all the rest.

Greengrass is perfectly suited for the task of filming Jason Bourne's ongoing adventure to recover his identity and memories, as The Bourne Supremacy takes some dark turns that push our hero to the edge. Still hiding from the CIA two years after the events of the last film, Bourne enjoys a bit of happiness with girlfriend Marie. They both are ready to run at any moment, but the CIA has relaxed the pressure enough for them to get a bit complacent. That, of course, is when the strike come, and Marie is tragically murdered as she and Bourne attempt to get out of a crowded village in India.

So now, Bourne turns from the hunted to the hunter. He still evades capture, but his thirst for revenge drives him to take the fight to the agents who will not leave him in peace. In the first film, Bourne was always surprised when he instinctively drew upon his fighting prowess, and that held him back somewhat. Here, he knows that intelligence agencies turned him into a killing machine, and his fighting is significantly more brutal. Greengrass photographs these vicious fistfights in such a way that every punch feels as though it breaks bones and ruptures organs.

The car chases are better, too. The biggest action piece of the film concerns a chase through the streets of Moscow, as exciting and confusing a sequence as you could ever hope to see. While I can certainly buy MI6 outfitting James Bond's Aston-Martin and BMW's with heavy armor (I mean, wouldn't you start there before trying to make it invisible?), but I never really bought his fancy little speedsters taking all the crashes and bullets and rockets they did. But Bourne commandeers boxy Euro cars, the kind that look as though they can take some punishment. And Lord knows Bourne's antics put them to the test more thoroughly than the best crash ratings.

While the story means far less here than in the first by virtue of stretching out the final act of a single book, The Bourne Supremacy is no less intriguing thanks to its actors. Brian Cox and Joan Allen deepen the levels of distrust and secrecy even within a single organization, as Allen's Landy attempts to sort out the bureaucratic mess left in the wake of Treadstone's failure. Abbot spends all of his efforts laying the blame for any loose ends on Bourne's feet and further raises Landy's ire against the agent when he pins the deaths of some of her agents on him as well. Allen is marvelous as the initially ruthless boss who begins to uncover the truth and doubt the necessity to find and stop Bourne.

Damon only improves upon the role he excelled at in the first film. He's got movie star looks, but also a plainness that allows him to fade into a crowd in any part of the world. Bourne only has about three facial expressions -- blank, tense and furious -- but Damon captures the torrent of emotions flowing underneath and presents a character who works as a three-dimensional study, not just some cartoonish, indestructible spy. Performances like this add to Greengrass' impeccable use of shaky cam (if only he was the sole person using the technique, because he embarrasses everyone else) to make a pulse-pounding thriller that lacks Identity's story but improves upon it in every other way.

The Bourne Identity

Though published throughout the '80s, Robert Ludlum's Bourne franchise came to the big screen at the exact right time. When The Bourne Identity premiered in 2002, the spy genre was all but dead: the Tom Clancy adaptation The Sum of All Fears, not one of his more spy-centric novels, did well enough at the box office but felt stale and pre-packaged, and the Bond series had reached the nadir of its self-parody with The World is Not Enough (2000) and Die Another Day (2002). Even the spy piss-take Austin Powers mustered up a gag-inducing sequel to pad out its already-thin franchise into a trilogy; as if the genre needed a parody at that point anyway.

The Bourne series changed all that. The first franchise of the post-9/11 era, Bourne saw through the glitz and glamor of Bond franchises and the like and crafted a gripping, brutal series that favored realism over gadget and sex-filled fantasy. Jason Bourne does not chase people down in Aston Martins outfitted with machine guns and invisibility cloaks; heck, in this film, he's the one being chased. This is a world of "real" cars, of Minis and Peugeots and Ford's European models. The only gadgets at his disposal are items he rigs himself.

Perhaps the greatest shift that The Bourne Identity brings is that it actually engages as a spy mystery. Spy films had grown so bloated that they were either lame comedies or over-the-top action spectacles. The very first shot, like some homage to Sunset Boulevard, shows a man face down in the ocean, presumably dead. A fishing crew recovers his body and a doctor removes bullets and a strange device, and he also discovers some strange documents. The man awakens but has no memory of who he is or what his odd personal effects mean.

The mystery of Bourne's identity, especially when taken in context with the series' sequels, amounts to little more than a MacGuffin. Here, however, it forms the basis of a solid plot, one from which the action flows naturally without ever seeming like the script was built around big stunts. In fact, you could hardly call the action pieces of this film "big": Bourne fights like an actual person, using his martial arts and weapon knowledge to quickly and brutally dispatch opponents. He doesn't need to strap a henchman to a rocket or feed them to sharks to kill somebody. The car chases of the film come the closest to a grand scale sequence, but Liman stresses tension and suspense over action, to great effect. The only moment that ever stands as too over the top comes when Bourne must shoot his way out of a hotel and basically jumps from the highest floor on top of the body of a man he killed, somehow aims and shoots another hitman right between the eyes on the way down, and survives the fall. In an otherwise straightforward film, this is a bit much.

Nevertheless, Bourne's story is filled with perfectly cast, interesting characters who add just as much intrigue as the lead. Marie (Franka Potente), an American citizen who's been backpacking around Europe for years, finds herself caught up in the mess when Bourne offers her some serious cash to drive him out of Paris. Yes, there is an inevitable romance, but it feels plausible, a result of Bourne's kindness and his frequent attempts to get her out of harm's way. Potente, the star of Run Lola Run, knows a thing or two about being on the run for an entire movie, and she has an excellent moment when Jason sends her into a hotel to get his guest records -- he can't as he is presumed dead -- and lays out a complicated plan to sneak through and steal the files, only for Marie to walk out two minutes later with the info, calming stating that she simply asked for them.

Meanwhile, the C.I.A. and Treadstone characters all have a suitable level of sinister intrigue. Treadstone director Conklin (Chris Cooper) reveals early on that Bourne works for the C.I.A., but he doesn't let this spoil the mystery over what went wrong with the trained assassin. You believe Cooper when he sends out other killers (played by Nicky Naude and Clive Owen, who offers up some simple but poignant lines at the end) to terminate Bourne simply because he's a stain on the department's sterling record. His direct superior, Ward Abbot (Brian Cox), has been kept in the dark about Bourne's failure, so he too must sift through the jumbled lies to sort out just who's head will go on the chopping block.

Paul Greengrass would take over the sequels and infuse them with his shaky cam style of shooting (more on that in later reviews), but Liman, previously known for indie fare like Swingers and Go, does a grand job with the fast-paced action. His more traditional approach allows for disorienting chases and fights and calm, stately shots of people conversing or characters silently moving.

So, The Bourne Identity has all the ingredients for a great action thriller: it's contained enough to ratchet up the suspense, but visceral enough to maintain the adrenaline. It proved that Matt Damon, heretofore known for his roles as troubled young men, proves to be an able and bankable action heavyweight, and he's a sight more intimidating than Bond ever was. Despite a few glaring problems -- the aforementioned "flight" down the stairs and that final scene which is just too cute to fit in with the rest of the movie -- this is an engaging ride that wonderfully sets up the best action trilogy ever made.