Thursday, August 09, 2007

Well, How Is It?


Ultimatum has opened at last, and to the best reviews of Matt’s career! It brought in $70.1 million in its first weekend, which turned out to be the biggest August opening of any film, ever (also outperforming the debut of any James Bond flick). Ratings of the movie broke down to 80% Excellent or Very Good, 40% Excellent and 55% Definitely Recommend. That’s 175% by my count, but that’s what Deadline Hollywood Daily says, and I wouldn’t argue with Nikki Finke – she’s written the Deadline Hollywood column for LA Weekly since 2002.

The reviews are great, the box office is great and Universal is one very happy studio. But how is it, really? Well, the film buffs I saw it with didn’t really buy the chemistry between Julia Stiles (Nikki Parsons) and Matt (Jason Bourne) this time around. In one truck stop scene in Spain, Bourne asks Nikki: “Why are you helping me?” and Nikki replies: “It was difficult for me, with you” before gazing thoughtfully into his rugged face and adding, “you really don’t remember, do you?” Duh! That’s only the point of like, all three films, Einstein! No, he doesn’t remember. And you seem to be implying there was something between the two of you that perhaps he should be remembering. But here’s the thing – if there were something to remember, shouldn’t Julia Stiles have had the opportunity to have played that as an underlying motivation in The Bourne Supremacy? But she didn’t. Do you know why? ‘Cause it wasn’t in the script! Was it in the Ultimatum script? I don’t think so, considering the script was still being written during filming. Matt said in Entertainment Weekly: “In any given scene I didn’t know where I’d just come from or where I was going. Which, as an actor, you kind of need!” He added “There wasn’t a single day where we didn’t have new pages!”

So it says a lot to me that the movie is as good as it is when it was being written and filmed simultaneously during a 140-day shooting schedule. If you don’t generally read about Hollywood stuff, let me just fill you in – that’s longer than most shooting schedules. And they never left well enough alone. They kept calling everyone back for reshoots (Edgar Ramirez, who plays Blackbriar assassin Paz, joked that the filming took so long they should have called the movie The Bourne Eternity). Julia Stiles admitted on Late Night with David Letterman that the truckstop scene was filmed multiple times, and yes, reshot later. So, was Nikki feeling a deep sense of loyalty to a former lover, or was she feeling extremely tired and ready for bed? Of course, when I look into Matt’s eyes, I’m ready for bed too, but that’s another kind of shooting schedule altogether.

Does the idea of The Bourne Improvisation bother me? No, not really, but I do wish they had been a bit more careful about continuity. The imdb.com and rottentomatoes.com boards are filled with thread after thread of people questioning whether the conversation between Bourne and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) in Supremacy was the same as the one in Ultimatum. I believe it was intended to be the same scene, as the dialog is so similar. But I’m at a loss for why they bothered to shoot the scene again, thereby risking the continuity errors they succeeded in making. For example, Landy’s cell phone rang in Supremacy, but it vibrated in Ultimatum. And the weather was somewhat warmer in Supremacy than it was in Ultimatum, as evidenced by the lack of snow on the ground.

Still, without a script and filmed over a five-year period (I kid because I love), Paul Greengrass brought Ultimatum in on time and on budget, and since the film’s reviews were pretty much the kind of thing that happens in fairy tales (“the slipper fit and they had a 94% positive rating on rottemtomatoes.com”), it’s likely Universal will be asking Mr. Greengrass and Mr. Damon to try to repeat this success. Will they want to sign on again? Hard to say. Matt was using words like “the story we set out to tell has now been told” and “from the creative side, this is definitely the end of the story of this guy’s search for his identity” during early interviews. But recently, his stance hasn’t been quite so clear cut. What does that mean? It all comes down to money, kids. If they offer enough money to Greengrass and Damon, there’s likely to be a Bourne Redundancy.

But first, there are other projects vying for Matt’s attention. One is The Fighter, about Boston Irish fighter Mickey Ward and his half-brother, Dicky Eklund (Matt), who gets strung out on crack, goes to prison and redeems himself as Mickey’s boxing coach. Jude Law played against Matt as a character named Dicky in The Talented Mr. Ripley, so I think it would be nice if he played a character with Matt’s Ripley name (Tom) in this film. I like symmetry. Another film Matt signed onto is Imperial Life in the Emerald City, matching him up again with director Paul Greengrass. That one concerns another Dicky (Cheney, this time) making some mistakes during the installation of a new administration in Iraq in May 2003, until, as one former staffer put it, “it all blew up in our faces.” Rajiv Chandrasekaran (Baghdad bureau chief for the Washington Post), wrote the book on which it's based.

Here's one more point of interest I can leave you with from recent press clippings. Matt, it turns out, is not like Paris Hilton. I think that goes without saying, but an interviewer in Entertainment Weekly thought it worth mentioning. He clarifies the analogy: “I don’t go on the internet and see grainy images of your crotch as you’re getting out of a car.” Matt replies “Maybe you’re not looking hard enough.” Well, Matt, I know that was a joke, but all I can say is, yes, I am looking hard enough, and no, it simply isn’t out there.

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