THE BOURNE LEGACY

THE BOURNE LEGACY is very much the B-team continuing a critically acclaimed and commercially successful action franchise. Instead of director Paul Greengrass and star Matt Damon, we have Tony and Dan Gilroy and director and writer, and star Jeremy Renner (THE HURT LOCKER).  The only sensible move the writers make is to avoid Renner just inhabiting the character of Bourne.  Rather he is another member of the elite programme that created Bourne, who is still at large. The US intelligence service, scared that the programme of genetic enhancement will go public, decides to shut it out, which basically involves a manhunt of all the "mutants" and the scientists who did the work.  Cue a partnership between Renner's agent and Rachel Weisz' scientist as they travel the world looking for the drug that will "lock in" Renner's enhancements.  

THE BOURNE LEGACY is a good enough "tab A into slot B" movie with solid performances from the lead actors and a good enough script and plot premise.  I remain sceptical about whether Renner is really a leading man - whether he has sufficient charisma and screen heft. I wanted more of the danger that lurked just below the surface in THE TOWN - more of the raw edginess. I also remain sceptical about Tony Gilroy as a director as opposed to a screenwriter: too many of the chase scenes felt baggy and boring. There's none of the subtlety, style and confidence that he displayed in MICHAEL CLAYTON.

Overall this film is not as bad as many had feared, but it isn't really in the same league as the original trilogy.

THE BOURNE LEGACY is currently on release in the Philippines, Singapore, the Czech Republic, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Canada, India, Paraguay, the USA, Vietnam, Ireland, the UK, Spain, Australia, Denmark and New Zealand. It opens on August 23rd in Argentina, Portugal, Serbia, Slovenia and Mexico; on August 29th in Indonesia, Sweden, Bahrain, Kuwait, Peru, Russia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Colombia, El Salvador, Estonia, Latvia and Turkey.  It opens on September 6th in Hungary, the Netherlands, Brazil, Italy, Lithuania, Norway and Pakistan; on September 12th in Belgium, Germany and Israel; on September 19th in France, Finland and South Africa; on September 28th in Japan; on October 4th in Greece; on October 25th in Chile and China and on November 23rd in Venezuela.

THE BOURNE LEGACY is rated PG 13 in the USA and has a running time of 135 minutes. 

STATE OF PLAY - derivative, badly made, dull political thriller

I love political thrillers, and have liked the previous work of the writers behind STATE OF PLAY - Billy Ray (FLIGHTPLAN), Matthew Michael Carnahan (LIONS FOR LAMBS), and Tony Gilroy (DUPLICITY, MICHAEL CLAYTON,THE BOURNE MOVIES & THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE). Unfortunately, these collective talents have turned in a script that, if one were being kind, might be accused of excessive nods to genre tropes, and if one were honest, would be accused of being derivative, lazy and predictable.

Russell Crowe plays an investigative journalist called Cal McAffry, who works on a Washington Post-style paper. We know he's a maverick reporter because, in lazy movie-shorthand, he's overweight, he needs a haircut and shower, his desk is a mess and he's mean to a newbie blogger, Della Fry, played by Rachel McAdams. He has a ballsy, fearless, old school, harrassed editor - is there ever any other type? - played by Helen Mirren. We know she's got balls of steel because she swears a lot. Then again, as soon as the cub reporter starts whimpering because she's being demoted, the apparently hard-nosed editor caves in. Where's the subtle power of Ben Bradlee is ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN - a movie that STATE OF PLAY overtly aspires to be? Cal McAffry has a friend who is a US Senator, Stephen Collins, crusading against the military-industrial complex, as represented by a Blackwater style company called Pointcorp. We know he's serious, earnest and a politician because he has a square jaw and bags under his eyes. His wooden acting may also be a marker of the essential superficiality of the political class, if we were still being generous. Cal and Stephen both dated a woman in college who Stephen later married, and cheated on with an intern who has since been found murdered. The wife is played by an age-appropriate delivery device - Robin Wright Penn - the intern is played by a red-head so we'll be able to pick her out easily in the CCTV footage.

From all this information, and given that I've told you that the writers are in awe of the great paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s, you should be able to piece together the plot. The politician is implicated in death of his young lover. Both were investigating multi-billion dollar government contracts. Could it be that greedy capitalist bastards did it? The movie is very much a standard-issue jigsaw puzzle. I knew whodunnit because I'd seen the infinitely superior British TV serial on which this movie is based. Doctor007 knew whodunnit about thirty minutes in because he has a brain and he's seen enough films like it.

Apart from the predictability and laziness of the plot and characterisations, I was deeply disappointed by the casting decisions and the production values. Russell Crowe, Robin Wright Penn and Ben Affleck are meant to be college contemporaries but Crowe looks a decade older than Affleck. I was sad to see the role of Dominic Foy cut down so much (although Jason Bateman was rather good in the role) and I was sad to see Ben Affleck's role become more two-dimensional. Worst of all, there was a lot of sloppy tech stuff that pulled me out of the film. Look out for some particularly ham-fisted photo-shopped pictures of Senator Affleck as an Iraqi war soldier. My god-daughter could do a more believable job of cutting and pasting a photo of one man's head onto another man's body. 

All in all, this movie is a cheap, serviceable thriller at best, and a pretentious, dull, derivative thriller at worst. Avoid.

STATE OF PLAY is on release in Canada, Iceland, Spain, Turkey, the USA and the UK. It opens in Egypt, Greece, Italy, South Korea, the UAE, Finland, Norway and Sweden next week. It opens on May 22nd in Japan and on May 29th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, New Zealand, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Lithuania, Mexico and Romania. It opens on June 5th in Estonia; on June 12th in Singapore and Brazil; on June 18th in Argentina, Chile, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal; on June 24th in France and on July 1st in Belgium.

SPOILER: Also, did anyone else find it a tad disappointing to have a movie aim at indicting the military-industrial complex but end up as a movie motivated by sexual jealousy?

DUPLICITY - slick and twisted, but occasional longueurs

Tony Gilroy follows up MICHAEL CLAYTON with a similarly stylish corporate thriller that substitutes romantic banter for genuine heft. Clive Owen and Julia Roberts create genuine chemistry as the spies scamming corporate bosses, Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti. The fun comes from Roberts' and Owen's charming delivery of witty dialogue as they ponder whether they are really in love or just in love with the paranoid brilliance of suspecting they are mutually scamming each other. Unfortunately, the nuts and bolts that make up the procedural thriller are pretty lacklustre. I gave up caring who was actually scamming whom long before the end. Stylistically, the Ocean's Eleven rip-off kitsch seventies score and split-screen nonsense was deeply irritating. All in all, mildly entertaining, though arguably better for DVD and dinner night than a trip to the multiplex. And what of Roberts? Is this the big come-back triumph everyone's banking on? Frankly, she looked like her prettiness had been piped to the surface of her. But that's just superficial, right?

DUPLICITY is on release in Spain, Australia, Chile, Israel, New Zealand, Thailand, Iceland, Turkey, the UK and the US. It opens next week in Belgium, Egypt, France, Croatia, Germany, Portugal, Russia, the UAE, Brazil, Estonia and Italy. It opens in Greece on April 16th; in Argentina on April 23rd; in Hungary, Denmark and Japan on May 1st; in the Czech Republic on May 7th; in Finland and Sweden on May 29th; in Norway on June 5th; in the Netherlands on June 11th and in Singapore on July 2nd.

MICHAEL CLAYTON - innovative, intelligent morality tale

Let me be clear: MICHAEL CLAYTON is one of the best films I have seen this year. Every facet of the film drips with quality, intelligence and integrity.

George Clooney goes into unfamiliar territory, thankfully miles away from the self-consciously cool Danny Ocean. He plays a one-time litigating attorney called Michael Clayton. Clayton now spends his time cleaning up behind big clients. He's been cleaned out by gambling debts and a restaurent project that failed. He's a divorced father and he has an uneasy relationship with his family. Indeed, in all but the denouement, Clooney spends his time looking bewildered and borderline disgusted with himself and the pathetic hoops he has to jump through. It's an impressive performance, not least in the final scene where the camera holds on a close-up of Clooney's face as he digests the events of the film. There's no dialogue and no let up: just the opening credits rolling over the end of the film.

The bones of the film concern Clooneey's character dealing with a leading litigator who's seemingly lost his marbles in court. His only job is to get the litigator back on his meds and back defending a big corporate client from a $3bn class action lawsuit. The corporate client is particularly ruthless about ensuring a beneficial outcome.

But the real business of this film is to show how each of the main characters comes to a brutal realisation about the nature of the corporate world and their part in it. Michael Clayton is a man who realised that he has been bought and for a cheap price, at that. The litigator - played by Tom Wilkinson - realises that he has wasted six years of his life defending a case he doesn't believe in - and that this is representative of corporate America. Perhaps the most intriguing character, though, is Tilda Swinton's corporate council, Karen Crowder. She begins as a nervous businesswomen, eager to impress and to look the part. Her imperceptible slide from conscientious legal advice to protecting the firm at all costs is deftly portrayed thanks to assured editing and a subtle performance.

Every member of the cast gives a subtle and authoritative performance, from Austin Williams, who plays Clayton's kid, to Sydney Pollack who plays the leading partner of the firm. Behind the camera, I loved the way in which the shots were framed, usually looking through doors or windows and around corners. I loved the misty, gloomy lighting contrasted with the guiltless wealth of rich corporate interiors. And I love that Tony Gilroy's script never over-explains and doesn't hope to see every plot strand to a neat conclusion. Most of all, I love that MICHAEL CLAYTON is not another slick but tired court-room thriller but a patient and brilliantly put-together character study. We need more cinema of this calibre.

MICHAEL CLAYTON played Venice and Toronto 2007 and is currently on release in the UK. It opens in Italy and the US next week and in Argentina, Hong Kong, Denmark, wide in the US, in France, Australia and Iceland the following week. It opens in Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway on October 25th and in Turkey, Germany, Spain, Finland, Russia in November. It opens in Egypt on January 23rd 2008 and in Japan on February 23rd 2008.