22 JULY

22 JULY is a nearly three hour film on Netflix by Bourne director Paul Greengrass.  Its length is explained by its conception as a three part series.  But there's a more profound explanation to do with Greengrass wanting to go beyond just depicting the 22 July 2011 bomb attack in Oslo and the shootings in Utoya that left 77 dead.  He also shows the apprehension and trial of the white supremacist terrorist, and the painful attempt at recovery by the survivor who testifies against him.  This stands in sharp contrast to the intense single-shot film UTOYA - JULY 22 which focuses exclusively on the victims experience of the mass shooting on Utoya.  I found that film to be intense - it moved me to tears - but also deeply clever in the way in which it didn't ever show the terrorist or bring attention to him.  It put the teenagers' experience first, and tried its hardest not to give the terrorist the notoriety and platform he craves. By contrast, 22 JULY is more of a procedural - running through the events of that day and the judicial response with efficiency.  I wasn't scared during the brief depiction of the violence and I wasn't on the edge of my seat during the trial.  The only part of the film that really involved me was the story of the teenage boy who suffers severe physical and emotional damage and has to gather courage to testify. But even there, I didn't have the visceral emotional reaction that I experienced watching the other film. I wonder if this is because the constant screen time given to the terrorist was alienating. It brought me out of the film because I was alarmed by the fact that Greengrass was unwittingly giving a platform to a man who committed these attacks precisely to air his views.  And I also worry that there's a type of sick individual who will see this man walking around Utoya in a police uniform gunning down kids and then spouting his racist views and be attracted to it, or see it as inspirational.  So for that reason, for its more straightforward shooting style, its almost banal procedural approach, I think 22 JULY is far from a must-see film - whereas UTOYA - JULY 22 is one of my films of the year. 

22 JULY is rated R and has a running time of 143 minutes. The film played Venice and Toronto 2018 and was released today on Netflix worldwide. It also has a limited release in cinemas.

JASON BOURNE

Matt Damon is back in the fourth episode of this grungy spy thriller franchise inspired by the Robert Ludlum novels. The film is decent, if not spectacular and whetted my appetite for the next phase in the series.

JASON BOURNE can be split into four parts, shot in Athens, Berlin, London and Las Vegas.  In the opening segment, ex CIA-agent Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) hacks the CIA and delivers the Black Ops files to Bourne under the camouflage of an anti-austerity riot in Athens. This is director Paul Greengrass' way of injecting some social relevance to the movie, although the post-Edward Snowden privacy vs security debate is far more relevant to the Bourne world than the anti-austerity debate.  Regardless, my putting the obligatory chase scene in a city torn apart by molotov cocktails we get some truly breathtaking visuals and cinematography. In fact, this may be my all-time favourite Bourne chase-scene. 

In the second part of the film we follow Bourne to Berlin where he gets a Snowden like hacker to open up the files so that he can learn the dirty secret at the heart of the Black Ops programme that recruited him. I'll resist saying more for fear of spoilers. But what we're really setting up here is the relationship between Bourne and Heather Lee - a CIA IT specialist played by Alicia Vikander. The  key point is that while CIA Chief Dewey (played by Tommy Lee Jones) just wants to have Bourne assassinated, Lee thinks she can bring him in from his life of bare-knuckle boxing (I kid you not).

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS - LFF 2013 Day One

Tom Hanks as the freighter captain boarded by Somali pirates.

You can listen to a podcast review of the movie below:

The word to describe the new Tom Hanks-Paul Greengrass true-life thriller CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is "tense".  You get about five minutes of mildly tense chat between a lovely decent husband (Hanks) and wife (Catherine Keener) and then we see him land in Oman to pilot a commercial freighter through perilous Somali waters to the Kenyan coast.  We then get about an hour of petrifying highly tense terror as a band of Somali pirates tries and tries again to board the gigantic freighter, and then another hour of killer tension as the US navy try to save our erstwhile hero, who's now been forced into a large lifeboat with the pirates - the key question, can the Navy Seals end the attack without also killing Phillips as collateral damage? 

There's no comic relief.  No five minute pause for reflection.  No calm waters.  Even if you know how this true-life story works out, I guarantee that Paul Greengrass' handheld up-close filming style will keep you on the edge of your seat.  And when you finally get that moment of catharsis - perhaps the finest ten minutes of acting in Tom Hanks' career - the emotion is overwhelming. 

Is the film perfect? No.  The opening dialogue between husband and wife is hamfisted - so blatantly shoehorning a discussion about tough times in post financial crisis America.  The dialogue on the ship in the opening scenes is also a bit "Basil Exposition", as the crewmates try to take us in babysteps through how a ship like this works.  At one point, if I recall rightly, Tom Hanks even says "walk me through the plan".  But one the film settles into the stride it hits an even-handed complexity and nuance that is truly admirable.  The chief pirate, Muse (Barkhad Abdi) is painted as an intelligent man with few options, boxed into a corner and never likely to benefit from the money he's making - something Phillips calls him out on.  And a particularly touching relationship forms between Phillips and the younger, shoeless pirate. 

Overall, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is just what you'd expect given the talent attached to it.  Classy, intelligent, brilliantly directed, superbly acted, and deeply immersive.  And a special shout out to cinematographer Barry Ackroyd who takes us to the heart of the action. 

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS has a running time of 134 minutes.

CAPTAIN PHILIPS will be released on October 11th in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Russia, the UAE, Finland, Iceland, Jamaica, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the USA. It opens on October 18th in France, Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, Mexico and the UK. It opens on October 25th in the Philippines, Argentina, Denmark and Colombia. It opens on October 31st in Chile and Italy; on November 7th in Switzerland and Italy; on November 10th in Taiwan; on November 15th in Bulgaria and Uruguay; on November 20th in Belgium, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands and Turkey; on November 29th in Japan and on December 5th in Singapore. 

GREEN ZONE - too simplistic, too late

GREEN ZONE is Matt Damon and Peter Greengrass' risible attempt to sucker the fanbase of the BOURNE films into watching a movie with a more avowedly political subject matter. Which just goes to show that the mainstream audience isn't that dumb. Just because it's got shaky handheld camera work and Matt Damon running around looking earnest and puzzled, doesn't mean that a movie is suspenseful or fundamentally politically interesting. I think the basic problem with GREEN ZONE, other than that it's not BOURNE 4, is that it's trying to make something we now taken as read look interesting. Yes, yes, it's a crying shame that we were taken into war in Iraq on the false premise that the Iraqis had weapons of mass destruction. But, seven years later, I think the public is too jaded to really care. We were lied to - we're in a mess - now what? Kathryn Bigelow broke through the apathy with her micro-psycho take on the archetypal figure in a street-fighting war - the bomb disposal expert. Her film, THE HURT LOCKER, was tense, but also took us into a side of the war that we genuinely might not have know about before. But GREEN ZONE, for all its earnest good intentions, tells us nothing new, and shows us nothing new. Roger Ebert says that GREEN ZONE looks at war in a way no other war film has, insofar as the US is the dupe not the hero. I beg to differ. Hollywood has been making great films about the vicious lie at the heart of most wars for decades, not least about Vietnam and more recently with THREE KINGS. Ebert also damns with praise here: "By limiting the characters and using typecasting, he [Brian Helgeland] makes the deceit easy to understand". Respect to Ebert, but no. If you have to debase yourself with typecasting, then you're just not up to the job. And at any rate, this film really just isn't that complicated. The trick missed is to show the personal human price paid. As THE HURT LOCKER took inside the insane world of the lead character, we should've seen more about how a stand-up guy like Damon's CWO Roy Miller would've reacted psychologically to realising that he'd been duped. What happens when the naive man grows up? That to me is more interesting than how fast and where he runs around.

GREEN ZONE is on release in Australia, Kazakhstan, Russia, Singapore, Canada, Finland, Indonesia, Norway, the Philippines, Spain, Sweden, the UK, the USA, Egypt, Germany, Kuwait, Switzerland, and Austria. It opens this weekend in Denmark, South Korea and Estonia. It opens on April 14th in Belgium, France, Argentina, the Netherlands and Brazil. It opens in Italy on April 23rd, in Turkey on April 30th, in Japan on May 14th, in Hungary on June 3rd and in Poland on June 4th.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM - bang, crash, wallop, shark, jump, vomit!

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is the third movie in the spy thriller franchise based on the Robert Ludlum novels, starring Matt Damon as the trained killer with amnesia and a grudge against the CIA.

The movie goes like this:

Bang! Crash! Wallop! Bourne is chased through Moscow, Waterloo station, Madrid, Tangier, NYC. He runs! He jumps! He punches the crap out of highly trained CIA goons! He smashes through glass! He deliberately crashes cars multiple times! He jumps off of tall buildings!

You admire visionary director Paul Greengrass' superlative hand-held camera-work and voyeuristic, slippery POV shots.

You get motion sickness.

Bourne utters the only cool line of dialogue in the movie.

David Straithern a.k.a. CIA evil baddie/rendition-lovin' neo-con says "We have a situation here" for the eighth time.

Bourne does something so incredible it renders the director's attempts at realism futile. You lose all faith in the franchise.

You go home.


Given the facetious tone of my review, I thought I'd bring you in on the thoughts of Matt Nelson: Offical Nice Guy & Human IMDB. (Minor spoiler in the final paragraph).

"Well now. The Bourne Ultimatum. Hmm…what can I say? It certainly has been a bad year for trilogies. You know, I’ve been trying to make up my mind about this movie for days. Did I enjoy it? Yes. Did I think it was anywhere near the standards of the previous two films? Hell no. Which is real shame because, other than Die Hard 4.0, this was the big summer blockbuster I was looking forward to most of all. I recall talking to a friend of mine a few months ago about the third Bourne film and he said: “It won’t be that good. I mean, where can they go with the character that they haven’t gone already?” He didn’t really know much about the Bourne films, so I labelled his “naïve” comments as ignorant and told him how strong I thought the franchise was going to continue to be. After all, the Bourne films were compelling, well acted, fast paced (yet not over the top) and (above all) fresh. Incredibly, he was proved more right than even he knows.

The story really didn’t explore any new territory and was only reasonably good filler for the action sequences. The wonderful Albert Finney was underused and, essentially, nothing more than replacement part for Brian Cox (man I love Brian Cox). It just seemed so lame, not to mention lazy, to hear that there was yet another bad guy “really” behind it all that you conveniently only now remember.

I agree with your comments about the style of shooting that Paul Greengrass incorporated during the picture. It was a brave move and, to give Greengrass his dues, worked well during the action sequences. However it was sometimes too much to take and I found myself hoping for just a little reprieve from all the jerking back and forth. Even during the slow, intimate scenes in small offices/motel rooms etc (which I didn’t feel merited the hand-held style of filming) the camera never stopped jerking in every direction – it was hard to see what was going on occasionally.

Also, I never felt like Bourne was ever really in danger. One of the great things about the previous instalments was that he got seriously injured when facing off against other skilled operatives and it wasn’t definite that he would walk away the victor. Yes he’s highly trained, and will probably come out on top, but he suffers for it. In this movie he just kicks ass and (I think) limps once off screen after a car crash.

Being fair, there were some great car chases and brutal fights scenes during the movie that did put a smile on my face. Then again, the car chases felt repetitive of the previous films and there seemed to be a few too many punch sound effects added during the fights sequences. And of course the cheesy ending didn’t help – no I’m not talking about where you see that he isn’t actually dead, I’m talking about the fact that everyone we’re meant to view as morally repugnant ends up being prosecuted for what they’ve done. Oh that’s nice and tidy then. Yawn anyone?

Overall I thought the film was enjoyable enough, but it should have been so much more.

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is on release in the US, Bahrain, Egypt, Hong Kong, Thailand, Indonesia, Latvia, Poland, Taiwan, the Philippines and the UK. It opens this weekend in Greece, Israel, Singapore, Brazil, Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland and Spain. It opens later in August in Iceland, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Lithuania, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Estonia. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM opens in Germany, Mexico and Turkey on September 7th; in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Norway and Sweden on September 14th; in Portugal and South Korea on September 20th; in Malaysia on September 27th; in Serbia and Montenegro on October 11th; in Hungary on October 25th; in Italy on November 1st and in Japan on November 17th 2007.

My perverse reaction to UNITED 93

I fully respect people, notably those who had friends or relatives die in the attack, who object to the making of movies about 9/11. However, I believe that there are no boundaries to what art can take as its subject. Moreover, if ever there were a director who could come to this material with confidence-inducing credentials, Paul Greengrass is that director. He has produced outstanding documentaries that approach controversial, politically-charged material with sensitivity and objectivity. This is notably the case with his Golden Bear-winning documentary about the Northern Irish troubles, BLOODY SUNDAY. Furthermore, interviews suggest that Greengrass was at pains to produce a movie without offending anyone and that did full service to all involved in the events. This was to be a faithful testament of the events of 9/11 rather than a blockbuster action movie.

Paul Greengrass has stayed true to his aims. What we have here is just under two hours of cinema that tries to document the unfolding events on 9/11 through the prism of the flight UNITED 93. For the first third of the movie we see the crew and passengers board UNITED 93, but most of the focus is on the air traffic controllers who realise that American 11 has been hijacked. We see them perform brilliantly under pressure – tracking the plane into New York airspace, and then lose it – only to look up and visually see smoke pouring out of the World Trade Center. The second third of the movie focuses on the reactions of the air traffic controllers and the military as they see another plane go into the World Trade Center and realise that they have a full-on attack on their hands. You get the feeling that while air traffic control worked brilliantly to track the suspected and actual hijacked planes, the military, despite all good intentions, were hamstrung by the lack of speed with which the rules of engagement were established as well as a shortage of armed fighter planes. In the meantime, UNITED 93 is hijacked. In the final third of the film, attention is focused on the events inside the plane. The passengers realise that the pilots are not flying the plane. They also realise that they are not in the midst of a conventional hijacking, where it makes sense to co-operate, but a suicide mission. Passengers make emotional goodbyes to their relatives and some of the men bravely storm the hijackers and break into the cockpit. Their aim is to get one of the passengers, who has some experience as a pilot, into the cockpit and to somehow land the plane safely.

The film is scripted, acted, photographed and edited in a manner which makes it feel like a docu-drama. There is no attempt to contextualise the events – to explain why the terrorists are doing what they are doing. There is no attempt to give background information to the characters or to create archetypal heroes. The air traffic controllers are just ordinary guys doing a great job under pressure. Ditto the military. Similarly, Greengrass knows that hearing people say goodbye to their families on a cellphone on a plane the audience knows is about to go down is visceral material. We don’t need it to be amp’ed up with conventional block-buster devices.

However, the movie is not the “pure” testament that some reviewers have alleged. There are subtle directorial choices that do “amp up” the tension. For a start, the film has a full orchestral score that is used to push our emotional reactions further and faster – especially in the final scene of the film. Where there is a lush chord at the end, I would have preferred a respectful silence. Moreover, while the movie is objective, insofar as it tells how communication lines broke down between the FAA, the military and the air traffic controllers, it is not neutral. After all, there is an explicit criticism there of the difficulty of getting through to the President for one. I have no problem with this, but I think it is worth mentioning.

Now we move to the more difficult part of the review: my own reactions to the film. I actually toyed with not writing this part at all, for my reactions were perverse, and I suspect, way out on a limb. They may say more about me than about the movie. However, for what it is worth, here is a summary of my reactions to UNITED 93.

First, does the movie work as a straightforward testament to the events? I think that the answer for most viewers is “yes”, and I largely agree. However, three things jarred. First, the use of an orchestral score, which I mentioned before, did not sit well with me, especially in the closing moments of the picture. Second, there is one line of dialogue, uttered by the guy in charge of air traffic which seemed to me a little bit of a Hollywood-epiphany “duh, duh, daaaah!!” moment. After the planes go into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, this guy takes the brave decision to ground all air traffic and to let no planes from other countries enter US airspace. This is brave because it will cost billions and is sure to get him into trouble with the airlines. However, he says he is justified in taking such an extreme action because “we are at war with someone”. Now, this seems a remarkably prescient and portentous line of dialogue. Maybe the guy really did say it. Either way, it felt a bit “Hollywood” and conspicuous to me. Third, in general Greengrass did well to cast a bunch of unknown actors in this movie, so that none of the passengers are “characters” played by famous actors. This adds to the docu-drama feel of the movie. However, anyone who watches a bunch of TV or cinema will immediately recognise the character actor playing the passenger who organises the counter-attack on the hijackers. Because I recognised this one actor as an “actor” he was conspicuous, and that brought me out of the movie.

Is it enough for this movie to be a straightforward testament? While I am convinced that UNITED 93 is as respectful a movie as one could hope for given the material, I found myself wondering whether it was enough for a movie to be a respectful memorial. Greengrass has made the decision not to contextualise or interpret or explain anything. I can understand this. For imposing a structure or an explanation is a hazardous task. However, what we are left with a move which I found to be an unedifying experience. Quite simply, as I had read the 9/11 Commission Report, it added nothing to my understanding of the events. Given the concept of the movie, we were never going to learn anything about the motivations of the terrorists, which for me, was the key question I wanted to know about after the attack. While one of the hijackers, Ziad Jarrah, looks nervous before the event, we never know why. To that end, I found the UK TV drama, HAMBURG CELL far more incisive and compulsive viewing.

Which brings me to my final and most fundamental difficulty with this movie: by refusing to go beyond a straight re-telling of the events, Greengrass has made a movie that seemed to me to be voyeuristic. After all, 9/11 was the first terrorist attack that we saw unfold on live television. Part of my memory of that day – and perhaps of everyone’s memory – was watching the three planes go into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. We seemed to see the footage of the towers collapsing on continuous loop. What we did not have until the release of this film was a comparable visual image burned onto our retinas of the fourth plane crashing into a field. We have that now. What’s more we do not have a spectator’s view of the plane crashing but a cockpit view.

This made me feel deeply uncomfortable. What is it that compels us to watch such footage? To need to see these events explicitly re-enacted – to create the “full set” of images? And to that extent, one wonders not if it was “right” to make such a movie but whether it was necessary. I resent the implication of the marketing that we can’t feel something unless we see it. There seems to be some kind of masochistic hype surrounding this movie: it will help us feel/empathise with the horrofic events as they unfurled. Well, unlike many in the cinema, I did not cry and I did not feel any more empathy/sympathy with those poor people than I did before entering the cinema. Again, I am sure that I am in the minority here, and that for many this movie was cathartic. It just wasn't for me.

So, I would not particularly recommend this movie to anyone unless they feel that they have not got a clear understanding of the timeline of events of the morning or that they are in need of catharsis. Those of us seeking understanding of what drove the terrorists to attack the US would be better off watching HAMBURG CELL or THE ROAD TO GUANTANEMO.

UNITED 93 is already on release in the US, UK, Germany and Austria. It opens in France on July 12th 2006 and in Australia on August 17th.