Deliver Us From Swedish Furniture

Bourne in the USA

After another slew of terrible Hollywood sequels, I mean who would have believed that the third Pirates of the Caribbean film could be worse than the second (however even that couldn’t manage to topple the king of this trick, namely the last in The Matrix trilogy), and another slew of old boys pretending they are still young enough to play action types - I mean the first Die Hard was a classic of the genre, this latest one smacks of another dose of CGI over, well everything from the plot to Bruce Willis’s wrinkles. I’m hoping that the new Indiana Jones might be an exception, but I have the horrible feeling I am just deluding myself….

Anyway, there has been one set of action films in the last few years that have actually been good. They even star Matt Damon, but somehow the Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy have been fantastic, taught, intelligent, action thrillers. No sappy hero gets the girl, no villian getting suddenly hopping up at the last minute to get shot by the side-kick to pay-back the hero or hero ‘accidently’ killing the bad guy when he stumbles and falls off a building or onto a sharp, pointy thing. No, you watch these things and the fights are not something Nureyev would be proud of, they are mad, scrappy blurs and when someone gets clocked, they don’t deliver a pithy line, they get hurt. The people behind both Batman Begins and Casino Royale have both pointed to these films as influences on their tougher, grittier style. Now we have the third part coming out. Bourne has spent the other films outside the USA, but this time he gets to cause mayhem in New York, as well as Europe, in case you haven’t noticed, I can’t wait!