Movies : June 2002

15 June 2002

The Bourne Identity

A Europe without border controls! How else to explain how a fishing boat full of Italian speakers finds a man just barely alive (Matt Damon) floating in the Mediterranean, with bullet wounds and mysteriously high-tech gadgets implanted under his skin, then puts into Marseilles? He can’t remember who he is, but can speak and read several languages, and can put up a fight. Making his way to Zurich (impersonated by Prague) and a safe deposit box (he kept his key on his person during his mission?) he finds money (lots of it), weapons, and passports in different names from various countries, all with his face. He chooses the name Jason Bourne, but by now, it’s clear that the armed forces and constabularies of several jurisdictions, foreign and domestic, are after him. In an otherwise deserted alley behind the U.S. consulate, he offers frustrated visa-seeker Marie Kreutz (Franka Potente) ten thousand dollars to drive him to Paris. (Another border ignored.) When they get there, Marie has talked so much that she is getting to like this Jason, and sticks by him as the assassins keep coming. Meanwhile, at the CIA, there is a desperation by a head (Chris Cooper) to prevent testimony to Congress that Bourne had a mission at all, to complete the mission Bourne had, and to put Bourne in a body bag by nightfall. <—> It’s a little like Ronin for the younger set, with a younger cast (Damon, Potente, and Julia Stiles as the field coordinator who screws up massively but remains alive at the end—she must figure in the sequels) and the same driving-the-wrong-way down Parisian highways offered by the 1998 film. Still, there’s plenty of action, lots of French cars, a smooch or two, and only one or two truly outlandish aspects. In a semi-erotic interlude (without any display of flesh, the rating is PG-13) in which Jason washes Marie’s hair and chops at it with scissors as a disguise, it occurs to neither of them to change its color? Anyone who remembers Potente from Run Lola Run, and her outrageously red hair therein, can’t help but think about hair color. Here, she starts as a brunette with a few red streaks on the side and ends up… a brunette. And that’s no new Mini Marie’s driving. I have seen the new Mini (honestly, one was sitting in the parking lot after I left the movie Friday night) and what she is driving is very much the old Mini.

118 minutes.

14 June 2002

The Importance of Being Earnest (2002)

Jack Worthing (Colin Firth), very well off and with plenty of time on his hands, has invented a brother, Earnest, whom he impersonates upon his visits to London. There he has met Algernon Moncrieff (Rupert Everett), constantly on the run from creditors, and become buddies. It helps that Jack finds Algy’s cousin, Gwendolyn Fairfax (Frances O’Connor), irresistible. For her part, Gwen finds her attraction to a man named Earnest undeniable. Then Algy, who is no stranger to the invention of companions, with his constant visits to the invalid Bunbury, discovers that Jack (whom he knows as Earnest) has a ward, Cecily Cardew (Reese Witherspoon), who is all of 18. He arrives at the Worthing estate in the guise of brother Earnest, even though Jack arrives moments later with the ashes of said brother. Turns out Cecily cannot resist a man named Earnest, either, and with the tutor (Anne Massey) and the local vicar (Tom Wilkinson) making eyes at each other, not even the dour glare of Lady Bracknell (Judi Dench), mother to Gwen, can stop the pairing off of everybody. <—> My memory of the 1952 version as shown on WDCA-TV20 is completely attenuated, so I am unable to make any comparison of the text or performances. But Everett starts off looking like a wax figure of himself. The dialogue, to the extent it is faithful to the original, may have been clever or witty once upon a time but now plays as sarcastic (no doubt some of that, when referring to the upper classes, was intended in the original). The action has been moved up by as much as a decade to accommodate Gwen’s solo journey to the Worthing mansion by motorcar. The coincidences and unlikelihoods pile up at the end, though.

94 minutes.

02 June 2002

Undercover Brother

Undercover Brother (Eddie Griffin) enjoys his ’fro, his gold Cadillac De Ville convertible coupe, and his orange soda (prominently from 7-Eleven). But when one of his solo missions of aid to the downtrodden interferes with the operations of the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. in its ceaseless quest for Truth, Justice, and the Afro-American way since 1972 against the Man, U.B. is recruited into the organization. A black general (Billy Dee Williams), veteran of operations in Iraq, is expected to announce his ambition to run for President but instead announces he will be starting a chain of fried chicken joints. The work of the Man and his most trusted henchman, Feather (Chris Kattan), is apparent. With the assistance of Smart Brother, Conspiracy Brother, Sistah Gal, the Chief, and the white intern mandated by affirmative action (Neil Patrick Harris), U.B., in the guise of Antoine Jackson, infiltrates the operations of the Man. When the Man sends the White She Devil in disguise (Denise Richards, in the sort of role Kathy Ireland would have done a few years ago) as the black man’s kryptonite, the action heats up as much as it can in a PG-13 movie (from Imagine Entertainment, the white bread purveyors of Apollo 13 and A Beautiful Mind). <—> An apparently good natured homage to the movies and television of the seventies (from an NPR commentator!) with only a token line as to how Latinos and Asians have changed the country since then, it’s fairly funny. Most of the schtick gets lost as time goes on, however (Conspiracy Brother stops reacting paranoiacally to ordinary words, for example) and ultimately the weight of its taking on a secret agent movie’s plot (the island fortress, the climactic fight, and so on) exceeds the filmmaker’s ability to keep the comedy envelope full.

85 minutes.

Entries subject to editing at any time. Last edited on: 12-Sep-2004