Movie review: “The Bourne Legacy”

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Partner and I finally saw “The Bourne Legacy” last weekend. 

 

First of all, there was this Jeremy Renner fellow, who has interesting eyes and a nice face and a very neato body. He’s Aaron Cross, a supersoldier / agent who’s caught in an elaborate doublecross / triplecross scheme, and who fights back.

 

 

Like so many modern action/adventures, it’s an extended chase scene. It is, however, an exceptionally well-done extended chase scene. It has the usual parkour stuff, but also mopeds and motorcycles and cars. Never for a moment do you lose focus, or forget the goal.

 

 

The thing that surprised me, however, is the cinematography.

 

 

There are a couple of scenes, in among the frantic chases, that are beautifully dreamlike:

 

 

-         An opening sequence in the mountains of Alaska, including a scene with Renner diving (mostly naked) in a freezing river in front of a waterfall, like every Hawaiian idyll you’ve ever seen, but at forty degrees below;

-         A violent shootout in a remote abandoned house, all white wood and long staircase and peaceful autumn foliage outside, that feels like something out of “Inception”;

-         A panic in a Manila drug factory, with hundreds of workers in pink smocks and pink hairnets running for the exits;

-         Manila itself, a Third World dreamscape of alleyways and broken rooftops and smoggy skylines;

-         An Elysian archipelago of tropical islands, and a small boat running between them.

 

 

The supporting cast (Scott Glenn, Ed Norton, Joan Allen, Albert Finney, Stacy Keach) could have been replaced with nobodies, or cardboard cutouts. The movie’s all about Jeremy and his traveling companion / hostage / girlfriend, Rachel Weisz. You know it’s going to turn out okay for them (until the sequel, anyway).

 

 

Partner and I highly recommend this picture.

 

 

And we’re deeply committed to the sequel.

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Jeremy Renner

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I mostly knew Jeremy Renner from his part in “The Town,” with Ben Affleck. Jeremy played a thug / bank robber with great abandon, and he has big staring eyes and a strange dominating presence, and he’s very real.

 

 

This is a big deal in the movies. You need to look real.

 

 

I heard last spring that he was playing Hawkeye in the forthcoming Avengers movie, and I smirked a little. Minor role in a major movie: who cares?

 

 

Well, he was wonderful. He was creepy and elegant and very convincing. He also bulked up amazingly, and did not look ridiculous when appearing with Iron Man and Thor and the Hulk at all; in fact, he looked like their peer.

 

 

Now he’s playing a superhuman secret agent in “The Bourne Legacy.” He still has that huge bulked-up body, and those chilly eyes. I haven’t seen the movie yet, but I’m already in love with him. My friend Apollonia (who has vowed herself to Robert Pattinson) has admitted to me that she finds Jeremy attractive.

 

 

And now I discover that Jeremy, before his very successful career as an actor, was a makeup artist.

 

 

Behold this sequence from a recent episode of “Ellen”:

 

 

 

 

He is adorable.

 

 

I don’t care if he’s gay or straight. (He looks straight to me, but I’ve been wrong about these things before.)

 

 

He is a fine actor, and is also very cute, and can do makeup, and packs on muscle very nicely when necessary.

 

 

As someone online said: “It’s nice to have something to fall back on, in case Plan A fails.”

 

 

Jeremy has lots of things to fall back on.

 

 

Whatta guy!

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Olympics update, dateline August 7, 2012

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I am enjoying the Olympics this summer.  They are chock-full of peculiar stories, and give me many a laugh and tear.

 

 

For example:

 

 

There was a badminton scandal. Apparently, eight players from South Korea, Indonesia, and China were throwing their own matches, in order to play against (and presumably beat) lower-ranked teams. The press threw up a couple of images of indignant badminton players, which were pretty funny; also there was a spate of badminton jokes on television. My favorite was: “Isn’t badminton something you play at your family reunion?”

 

 

A man with no lower legs or feet is competing in a track-and-field event. Oscar Pistorius of South Africa, who was born without fibulae and had his legs amputated below the knees in childhood (see photo above), uses “running blades” to compete. He does pretty well. There has been a sniffy little argument about whether the blades give him an unfair advantage; they’re pretty bouncy, apparently, but they also give him a disadvantage at the beginning of the race, so it sort of balances out. And, says I, what’s stopping the other runners from having their legs amputated and using blades themselves? I know that I myself would not be able even to stand upright on running blades. So: good on Oscar Pistorius, as my British friends would say.

 

 

Doping has entered the GATTACA era. A Chinese swimmer won her race by swimming at unbelievable speed. An American official insisted she must either have been doping, or – more insidiously – undergone some kind of genetic modification. (This is all the rage at the moment – have you seen the trailer for the new Bourne movie?) The Financial Times ran a very sober article about this last week, citing the example of “Marathon Mouse,” which (after genetic modification) can run twenty-five times farther than an average mouse. This is creepy, and (to date) undetectable. Who can say what's going on?

 

 

Upsets are fun to watch.  Why do we root for someone who’s already a champion? Isn’t it more fun to watch an underdog win? I hate tennis, normally – it’s just bip-bap-bip-bap to me – but I was lucky enough to tune in on Sunday just as Andy Murray aced his match point past Roger Federer, and I thought that was just fine. I hate to see the same six or seven people winning all the time. (Hear that, Michael Phelps?)

 

 

I’m baffled as to why some sports are in the Olympics and others aren’t. I’ve made fun of badminton today, and trampoline last week. One of my colleagues at work thought “canoe slalom” was a person’s name rather than an event. And yet: no lacrosse in the Olympics. No squash. No cricket. No camogie. (Usually it’s because they’re not universally played. Lacrosse, for example, is pretty much limited to the US and Canada. Cricket is popular in the UK and a handful of Commonwealth / former Commonwealth nations. Camogie – well, give yourself ten points if you even know what camogie is. But what about rugby?)

 

 

Now and then it makes sense to me why something is an Olympic sport. Judo and taekwondo, for example: it’s easy to train for these, and inexpensive – all you need is a bathrobe and a floor mat.  There were dojos everywhere in North Africa when I was there in the 1980s. Archery and shooting are modern transformations of hunting skills. Wrestling is about as primal as you can get. (Also, it’s fun to watch.)

 

 

I’ve been learning stuff every day through these Olympics. I hope it continues right through the closing ceremonies, when (according to the Financial Times) the seven young athletes from the opening ceremony will hand the Olympic flag over to seven elderly CEOs, who will bill back the young athletes for tuition fees.

 

 

More soon.

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