Matt Damon makes one hell of an action hero and the Bourne series must be one of the most exciting action movie franchises in recent years. The first two Bourne films were both superb films and the third continues that level of excellence.
Jo and I saw it yesterday at Nottingham Showcase. We both really enjoyed it. It’s a cleverly-plotted film with loads of hyper-realistic fights and car crashes. Definitely worth the sitting in a dark room with a whole bunch of strangers for a couple of hours.
I did have a couple of minor issues with the film though. For a start, it’s all so po-faced. There is only one smile made in the entire film, and that’s right at the end by the intensely boring Julia Stiles. Stiles is pretty enough, but she has no charisma and isn’t really called to do any proper acting.
Matt Damon is generally good value as the rogue CIA asset but he seems to be utterly indestructible. He’s involved in the mother of all pile-ups after tangling with one CIA goon and yet climbs out of the crumpled wreckage and runs off. They seemed to have the hyper-realism turned off a couple of times in order for Damon to provide some Terminator-style survival techniques.
Damon’s even had the cheek to criticise James Bond:
Hollywood star Matt Damon has dismissed James Bond as being stuck in the past.
The actor, who appears in the Bourne thrillers, said: “The Bond character will always be anchored in the 1960s and in the values of the 1960s.”
The suave spy was “so anachronistic when you put it in the world we live in today”, he said, but added that Bourne was no better or worse than Bond.
Damn straight that “Bourne was no better or worse than Bond”. Whereas the Bourne films are wonderfully exciting films in their own right they have precisely zero humour. I can’t remember one joke in all three films. I like my spies and action heroes to have some style and humour. James Bond has provided decades-worth of classic entertainment, something I can’t image Bourne emulating.
Still, The Bourne Ultimatum is easily the best film I’ve seen all year, so if you’re wondering what to see this week then you must go and see this.
However, I wouldn’t bother going to my local Showcase. It’s a bit of a disgrace of a cinema. It’s been there for a few years now and it’s looking horribly outdated. They seem ti employ and awful lot of disinterested, scruffy teenagers that just aren’t interested in the concept of customer service.
We were sat waiting for our film to start and had to endure about 25 minutes of adverts. 25 minutes! They then preceded to start showing us the wrong film – Licence to Wed. Now, I’ve read the reviews for Licence to Wed and there is no bloody way I’d fork out £6.40 for that piece of crap. Jo went to complain about the wrong film and someone came in to tell us that they were going to sort it out.
Unfortunately they then decided to break the projector and said it’d be at least another 15 minutes before they could fix it. Luckily there was the 2 o’clock screening starting in the next screen so we were advised to go and sit in there instead. So we did. We then had to sit through another 25 minutes of adverts.
This didn’t make us particularly impressed. Once we’d watched the film Jo complained about the series of events. We wouldn’t go back there again at all but we managed to get some free tickets out if them, so we’ll probably end up back there again sooner or later.
The UCI in town is much nicer if a little less convenient for us to get to. Either way, the Showcase is most definitely not our favourite cinema – too old, too dated and poor customer care. Go elsewhere.
