We watched, don't ask me why, the most recent Jason Bourne extravaganza -- The Bourne Hyperventilation I believe it was called. So-called "action" pictures are not my cup of tea. In my view, it's a genre that is far too deeply infatuated with its own cliches. The Bourne Mystification was not only prefamiliar but also unusually tricky to follow. It consisted of swatches of flashback interspersed with vigorous but interminable fight and chase sequences. The "action" was delivered in a multitude of stitched-together one- and two- second slices, which, even on the small screen, were vertiginous and almost barfitudinous.
The Bourne Hyperbole is a multiple car-chase movie. How many time do we need to revisit this cliche? Cars spinning out of control, cars shouldering each other for a place on the highway, cars ramming into each other, cars becoming airborne, cars landing on their sides, cars weaving into the oncoming lane, cars on sidewalks, sirens blaring, hoods flying open, windows shot out, guys shooting pistols at each other while driving one-handed at 100 mph -- interspersed with one-second glances at the speedometer, one-second glances of a foot on a brake -- all followed by the inevitable noisy, multiple-vehicle crash where the nasty hired killer winds up dead while our invincible hero emerges with only minimal, symbolic scathe. Is there anything in movies today that is more hectic, more predictable, or more boring?
Let me ask my readership this art-versus-life question -- what is the ratio of your own participation and/or observation of real-life car chases compared to the number of car chases that you've seen in movies? Am I the only twentieth-century American who has never been shot at or pursued? Never seen a fleeing Oldsmobile pass just inches in front of the oncoming semi? Yet I've experienced the film version of that very scene scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of times.
I think that in the next century, when movies will be studied by historians eager to understand the great age of petroleum-based transportation (as well as the golden age of film), our descendants will take it for granted that it was absolutely ordinary for pedestrians out for a Sunday stroll to be driven from the sidewalk by an out-of-control vehicle (usually a commandeered taxi trailed by a gaggle of motorcycle cops). They will think that in our century, there was never a time that a fruiterer put that last orange on top of his pyramid of oranges that some sort of vehicle didn't barrel into the display. They will know that any time, day or night, every plate glass showroom window in North America was liable to have a station wagon hurtle through it. Often in slow motion.
So here's my proposal for a new rating system for movies. In addition to the three or four stars, let's announce in advance how many car chases we are going to experience -- or better still, exactly how many cars were destroyed during the making of the film. It would certainly help me choose my entertainment if I were to learn that The Bourne Yesterday was a three-star, two-car chase, 197 exploded vehicles film.
While we're changing the rating system, I have another idea. Let's also have a Cute Puppy warning. I'm thinking of that scene where the hero and heroine finally make it to bed and there's a reaction shot of Cute Puppy putting his paw over his eyes. I never, ever, want to see that one again. Agreed: no more car chases, no more Cute Puppies. Life will be richer.
One further exercise: let us divide the number of cases of amnesia encountered in film by the number of cases of amnesia encountered in real life. And the answer is: it's impossible to divide by zero.
The 1:1 fight scene in the apartment in Bourne Supremacy was absolutely terrific editing. Won the Oscar. Well deserved in my book.
I don't care too much about car chases, but there's been some doozies (not counting the Simpson one years back) in NYC, DC, and Santa Monica -- all places where I live or have family/good friends (e.g., old lady loses control of car near NYU a few years back; a few months ago, drug addict drives car right through some street festival here in DC; two years back some driver lost control in the Santa Monica pier shopping mall and drove over some nice Calfornians.)
Posted by: CKNC | March 10, 2008 at 07:31 PM