Review: "Jason Bourne"

I wonder if the CIA has ever run an analysis of what percentage of their resources are spent just chasing Jason Bourne. It must be at least 25 percent, based on what we see in the movies, now in their fourth go-round with this self-titled and completely redundant film.

(Five, if you count the Bourneless Jason Bourne movie starring Jeremy Renner, and nobody does.)

“Jason Bourne” isn’t so much a single story as a series of chase set pieces played out against international backdrops. Jason (Matt Damon, grayer and thicker since his last outing nearly a decade ago) appears in Berlin, the local CIA team is sent after him, he leads them on a merry chase on foot and by vehicle, he takes a few out with his super awesome spy skills, and gives the rest the dodge.

Now we’re in London. Jason appears, the local CIA team… you get the idea.

The plot, such as it is, involves Bourne again trying to ferret out the truth of his background as an assassin in the Treadstone Program. He’s already recovered most of his lost memory, but there are a few more tantalizing pieces floating out there. Like that his dad was involved in the creation of Treadstone, and the current CIA Director, the reptilian Robert Dewey (Tommy Lee Jones), had something to do with his death.

There’s also another super-spy on the hunt who’s only referred to as “Asset,” played by Vincent Cassel. No, I mean literally, people call him on the phone or one of those spy ear piece thingees and say things like, “Asset, are you in London yet?” We know it’s going to come down to a faceoff between these two, since they’re setting up Asset as Jason’s supposed equal (ha!).

There’s an inordinate number of car chases in this Bourne outing, most notably a SWAT truck driven by Asset mowing through vehicles on the Las Vegas Strip, with Jason piloting some sleek black Product Placementmobile.

Alicia Vikander is the newbie, Heather Lee, a computer expert who acts as Dewey’s protégé but really sees him as a dinosaur. The Swedish actress speaks in a weird glottal voice that I think is supposed to be Generic American but comes across as Irish with the flu. Anyway, in her Bourne finds an unexpected sympathetic ear; she wants to bring him back into the CIA fold rather than just take him out.

It’s suggested that Bourne is truly tempted by this; but hasn’t he spent the last 15 years killing or crippling CIA agents chasing him? I can only imagine what the office Christmas party would be like. “And Mark’s Secret Santa was Jason, who’s given him… an artificial knee joint to replace the one he crushed in ’03. How nice!”

Turns out Dewey’s cooked up a plan for a new program, Iron Hand, which will allow the spooks to monitor everyone, everywhere. How scary! He’s even teamed up with a Facebook-like mogul, Aaron Kalloor (Riz Ahmed), to do it without the public’s knowledge.

Of course, during the course of the film we witness the CIA cut off the power to a remote hackers’ den in Iceland, activate street cameras as spy cams in Berlin, and tap into a landline phone to use it to wipe a laptop computer sitting a dozen feet away. Why is it they need Iron Hand, again?

I also find it weird that Bourne never even makes a passing attempt at disguise. Oh, he’ll put on a hat or take one off, but that’s about it. He’s, like, the greatest spy ever, but he can’t even don a fake beard or something?

Paul Greengrass, who co-wrote the script with Christopher Rouse, directs another adrenaline-fueled expedition into the land of Shaky Cam and Hyper Edit. His action scenes have no weight or impact; watching this movie is like looking into a shattered mirror that somebody reassembled without much care as to what goes where.

The ugly truth is there’s just no juice left in the Bourne shtick. Damon seems dyspeptic and impatient; his Jason Bourne is no longer the wide-eyed youngster trying to recover his soul, just another immortal action hero mowing down bad guys. But without quips – he barely even talks, in fact.

Final edifying tidbit: In the last movie Jason’s birth year was given as 1971, but now in the documents we see flash on screen it’s updated to 1978. Clearly somebody is worried about Jason Bourne’s act getting old … with good reason.

Video review: "Trance"

There are plenty of dumb movies, a few smart movies, and even fewer too-smart movies. “Trance” is one of the latter.

This twisty psychological thriller from director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”) is full of fake-outs and never-minds. The film spends so much time fooling the audience, it forgets to really engage us or make us care about the people we’re watching.

The trio of main characters end up as chess pieces, moved around for the convenience of the plot.

James McAvoy plays Simon, an art auctioneer who gets beaten into a coma during the botched robbery of a famous, valuable painting. He wakes up with amnesia about the event, which doesn’t sit well with Franck (Vincent Cassel), the dogged head thief. He and his goons pay Simon a visit and put the squeeze on him.

Turns out Simon was in cahoots with them all along, but now he can’t remember where he stashed the painting. They turn to Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson), a psychiatrist and hypnotist, to help him pore through his memories for a clue.

This unlocks all sorts of strange stuff going on in the mind of Simon, who may not be the mild-mannered schlub he appears to be. Soon there’s a love triangle and a three-way competition for the loot in the offing.

Boyle’s visual style is hyperkinetic and gorgeous. But you’ll probably end up feeling more dizzy than entertained.

Bonus features are sumptuous. They include deleted scenes and a “Trance Unraveled” easter egg. Plus a making-of documentary and several featurettes on hypnotherapy, the film’s distinct visual look, a final script rewrite and other topics.

The Blu-ray also has a retrospective of Boyle’s movies and “Eugene,” a short comedic film by Spencer Susser.

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Review: "Trance"

"Trance" starts with an art auctioneer explaining all the sophisticated steps his employer takes to foil any potential thieves looking to pilfer the ultra-rare and valuable works of art he deals in. So of course, it comes as little surprise when the film proceeds to show a daring group of criminals systematically subverting all that intricate security and making off with Goya's "Witches in the Air," worth tens of millions of dollars.

Well... at least, they come close. The thieves, led by the wily Franck (Vincent Cassel), return to their hideout and find the canvas cut out of the frame. They pay a visit to the young auctioneer, Simon (James McAvoy), and start doing nasty things to him in an attempt to retrieve the painting, figuring that he somehow made off with it for himself.

This might seem cruel -- Simon was already hospitalized after tangling with Franck during the robbery -- until we learn that Simon was in league with the gang all along. Alas, Franck popped him in the head so hard that Simon has plumb forgot where he stashed the loot. They turn to a beautiful hypnotist named Elizabeth (Rosario Dawson) to extract the information from his subconscious.

This might sound like a schlocky set-up for a b-movie crime thriller, but director Danny Boyle ("Slumdog Millionaire") and screenwriters John Hodge and Joe Ahearne are more ambitious. They have constructed a multi-layered puzzle box of a movie, with the trio of main characters shifting loyalties and time in the spotlight.
It's a very clever bit of filmmaking; too clever for its own good, in the end.

Obviously I don't want to give too much away, since the bulk of the film's appeal lies in the different turnings of the plot. Suffice it to say that Elizabeth's ability to hypnotize is real, and it leads Simon and the rest down a rabbit hole where we come to question the validity of what has come before.

It's an intellectual engaging enterprise, as the audience tries to catch on to all the hidden cues and sidesteps. What's missing is any emotional connection to these characters. MacAvoy, Dawson and Cassel are a talented trio of actors, but their characters are simply chess pieces in service to the plot.

Simon is a difficult egg to figure out. He seems very passive and pleasant, but flashes a discomfiting smile and has a buried nasty streak. Franck is the opposite, all alpha dog bluster and arrogance, but hides his worry at Elizabeth's ability to alter people's memories and motivations.

She is the toughest nut to crack, readily going along with this criminal enterprise when no legitimate therapist would. Elizabeth often looks scared, but we sometimes wonder if she's secretly got everyone dangling on her string.

There are also sexual attractions, protestations of love, and other ooey-gooey stuff that feels like it belongs to another movie. Not to mention the first time I've seen intimate grooming habits used as a key plot point.

"Trance" is skillfully made, and is entertaining enough as a psychological potboiler. But in its constant efforts at misdirection, somewhere along the way the movie forgot to show us something rather than merely fool us.

Review: "A Dangerous Method"

I greatly enjoyed "A Dangerous Method," though I recognize it's not for everyone. It's a fictionalized version of the relationship between three pivotal figures in the development of psychoanalysis: Sigmund Freud, his protégé Carl Jung and Sabina Spielrein, a patient of Jung's who became his lover and then a pioneering psychologist in her own right.

The movie is a mixture of esoteric discussions on the nature of the human mind and depictions of tortured sexuality. One minute, the characters are debating the way their budding discipline is being ostracized by the greater scientific community; the next, they're engaging in kinky sex -- one getting whipped while she watches herself in the mirror, etc.

I found the juxtaposition of intellectual and carnal impulses delightful, but then I'm a very thin slice of the movie-going demographic -- a psychology major my first two years in college, before switching to film and journalism. "A Dangerous Method" is based on the play "The Talking Cure" by Christopher Hampton (who also penned the screenplay).

For me, it was like watching dry history from my old textbooks brought to vivid, neurotic life. A terrific trio of actors illuminate the (supposed) private lives of these stuffy figures, their collaborations and conflicts.

Others, though, may simply dismiss it as high-brow erotica with a brainy bent.

The film is directed by David Cronenberg, and if ever there were a filmmaker made to delve into the psycho-sexual labyrinths of Freud & Co., it's him. Cronenberg ("Dead Ringers") has had a career flitting between mainstream and art films, straight-out horror and deeply disquieting dramas. His movies ("Videodrome") have always had a healthy dose of id-driven fear and loathing slithering under their slick surface.

Michael Fassbender plays Jung, who in 1904 was a 29-year-old doctor practicing the still-revolutionary "psychanalysis" invented by Freud. He is assigned as a patient Sabina, a 19-year-old Russian Jew who's had thoughts of becoming a psychologist herself, but is currently suffering from crippling mental instability.

Knightley, with her willowy beauty and fierce, large eyes, makes quite an impression as Sabina, contorting her body and unhinging her lower jaw in a convincing physical manifestation of her mind's anguish. She looks like her soul is so offended by the stain of her mortal failings, it's trying to shunt off its own fleshy sheath.

Eventually Sabina's psychosis is brought under control using classic Freudian theories about sexual repression, and she becomes Jung's student. Frustrated by trying to understand sex-based impulses when she has no intimate experience herself, she initiates as affair with Jung, who is married to a very wealthy woman (Sarah Gadon).

Things really get crackling when Freud steps into the picture. Played by Viggo Mortensen with magisterial authority, Freud views himself as both a pioneer and victim, attempting to rewrite the laws of science regarding the human mind, yet stubborn in his insistence that a psychologist's role is not to cure his patients but merely help them understand themselves.

"I can assure you than in a hundred years time, our work will still be rejected," he tells Jung at their first meeting. "Columbus, you know, had no idea what country he'd discovered. Like him, I am in the dark. All I know is I've set foot on the shore, and the country exists."

The two men's philosophies clash in time, with Jung feeling constrained by Freud's view of all psychoses as sexual in origin. "There must be more than one hinge to the universe," he tells Sabina.

Again, thrilling stuff from my vantage point, but maybe not yours.

3.5 stars out of four

Review: "Black Swan"

Desperately desiring to be profound but often profoundly silly, "Black Swan" takes high-minded American cinema down a notch or three. This unrelentingly serious drama about a ballerina's psychotic breakdown while preparing for the lead in "Swan Lake" is swamped by a hip-deep layer of theatricality and artifice.

Director Darren Aronofsky ("The Wrestler") and a trio of screenwriters present us with a trio of main characters, and one or two tertiary ones, who we do not for a second believe could exist in the real world. As Nina Sayers, the ingenue tapped to be the ballet company's new leading light, Natalie Portman draws a character so repressed and fearful, it's like she stopped growing at the age of 8.

Perpetually tremulous and paranoid, Nina makes for one pitiable protagonist.

After the aging star -- played by Winona Ryder, and doesn't that make us all feel old -- is given the boot, egomaniacal director Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel) taps Nina to play the Swan Queen, even though he has doubts about her ability to tackle the darker twin role of the Black Swan.

Thomas is every cliché of the domineering patriarchal artist rolled into one, right down to his insistence on bedding his leading ladies.

Lastly, and least credibly, is Mila Kunis as Lily, the new dancer who becomes Nina's understudy/doppelganger. With her imprecise but vibrant dancing style, Lily was born to play the temptress Black Swan, just as Nina was meant to be the pure, virginal Queen.

Kunis has the face of an angel and the voice of a Valley Girl (a perfect fit for her day job, voicing a TV cartoon character). Lily is carefree and flirtatious, and keeps seeking out the clearly unreceptive Nina for friendship, even after their encounters become progressively confrontational.

Barbara Hershey plays Nina's fantastically over-protective mother, who makes Mommie Dearest resemble June Cleaver. A former dancer herself, mother crushes her daughter with infantilizing TLC as if to prevent her from ever growing into something other than a "frightened little girl."

As if mother's projection of her failed aspirations onto her daughter wasn't obvious enough, Aronofsky and company hammer it home in one groan-inducing scene where she drops a mention to her own career: "The one I gave up to have you."

As opening night draws closer, Nina grows more and more anxious about her ability to perform -- and her mental state becomes more and more unhinged. After Lily is named her understudy, she becomes convinced the interloper is out to sabotage her career and take Nina's place at center stage.

The result is a lot of computer-generated imagery of Lily's face morphing into Nina's and back again. She even starts to develop a rash on her shoulder that matches the winged tattoo Lily just happens to have on her back.

And Portman and Kunis share a supposedly scorching bedroom scene in which the actresses elevate coyness into comedy.

Is Lily really just Nina's repressed sexuality bursting to get free? Are they disparate souls blending into one? Splintered fragments of Aronofsky's high-speed blender puree of Tchaikovsky's ballet?

Who knows? And, in the end, really cares?

This mush-brained psychological thriller is basically Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" as interpreted via "Fight Club," pressed through the sieve of a high school drama class festering with personality conflicts.