Badmouth » spies

MySpace for Spies (OMG!)

Brian McDonough — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 20:58:47 +0000

That’s right, there’s going to be a MySpace for spies. And you thought getting an early invite to Gmail was a status symbol. The U.S. intelligence community is going to launch “A-Space” before the end of the year, according to an article from the Financial Times: The Director of National Intelligence will open the site [...] No related posts.

The Bourne Ultimatum

Brian McDonough — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 05:42:39 +0000

[rating:4] Director: Paul Greengrass Starring: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, David Straithairn, Julia Stiles The third installment of the Bourne series starts off en media res—Jason Bourne is on the run, this time in Moscow, and everything you can be expected to remember of the previous film is here: Shaky handheld camera work that deliberately confuses the action, Matt Damon being pursued but MacGyvering his way out of trouble, sudden violence, and amnesia. Bourne still has a lot of holes in his past. He knows he was a programmed CIA assassin, but he doesn't quite know who he's killed and why. Most importantly, he doesn't know who he really is. From this opening scene we cut to a CIA briefing that should be titled “Jason Bourne Determined to Attack Inside the U.S.” or perhaps “Here There Be Exposition.” It's smartly done, though, and it not only refreshes the majority of the expected audience, who will have seen the previous installments, but provides enough for a complete newcomer to follow along. The real action is triggered by a British journalist chasing the story of Jason Bourne, and when both the CIA and Bourne himself decide to pay said journalist a visit, we get a big-stakes game of cat and mouse and cat. High tension ensues, and pretty much continues for the whole movie. The film pinballs from Moscow to New York, Turin, London, Madrid, Morocco and Paris in 111 minutes. Under the command of returning director Paul Greengrass, who picked up the second movie after Doug Limon ran the debut, the film is relentlessly tense and fast-paced. The complete lack of downtime pays off in a crackling thriller, of course, but the downside is that it can be hard to keep up with, and some character development is sacrificed to the pedal-to-the-metal narrative drive. Diminished character development serves Matt Damon well. He's playing an emotionally stunted cypher, so already he's in his comfort zone, but the film's steadfast refusal to try to get him to emote is like a softball slow pitch to Hank Aaron, and Damon is compelling as a singleminded, inhuman killing machine (but then, he proved that in Dogma). In fact, if the film drags anywhere, it's in his interaction with Julia Styles, a sort of platonic substitute for a love interest, to the degree that one cryptic comment and maybe some quick moon eyes constitutes an almost-love-interest. Her arrival in the film, as the only person Damon could possibly trust, at exactly the most improbable moment when he'd need her most, really strains credulity in a picture that already has its lone hero kicking the living crap out of entire squadrons of elite CIA agents. But it's something you shake your head over, like a mosquito has buzzed too close to your ear, and then you get on with the enjoyment. Related posts:

Casino Royale

Brian McDonough — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 23:33:57 +0000

[rating:4]
Director: Martin Campbell
Starring: Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Mads Mikkelsen, Judi Dench, Giancarlo Giannini

“Casino Royale” — call it the Secret Origin of James Bond — is without a doubt one of the best films in the long series. It makes a number of nods to the overall James Bond mythos — a ’64 Aston Martin is prominent, for instance, and at a grim moment there’s a riff on his standard martini preference — but is clearly its own creature, on a mission to add humanity and weight by putting the adventure, glamour and violence of Bond into the real-world context Ian Fleming brought to the novels back in the ’50s, but which the film series has rarely conveyed.

The big question whenever a new actor picks up the Walther PPK and gets fitted for the tux, is how well he carries the mantel, and what kind of Bond he’s going to be. Bond has evolved from Sean Connery’s suave tough guy into something of a cartoon. New Bond Daniel Craig plays Bond just as he should be — the deadliest man alive.

Mission: Impossible III

Brian McDonough — Fri, 05 May 2006 22:58:38 +0000

Director: J.J.Abrams Starring: Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ving Rhames, Laurence Fishburne Mission: Impossible II opened with Tom Cruise scaling a mountain, the camera Matrixing around him as he dangled over, I don’t know, the Grand Canyon or something, defying gravity and common sense with the determined joy of a loopy movie star using Oprah’s couch as a trampoline. Okay, not that psychotic, but still, it was an over-the-top opening in which Cruise picked up the traditional mission recording and threw it right into the camera as it self-destructed in its five allotted seconds. What does that tell you? That tells you that you’re watching a cartoon, a screwy bit of special-effects fun that shouldn’t be taken as any more serious than the fat pink bundle of cotton candy that it is. Episode Three of the action franchise opens with a scream over a black screen as a grimly evil Philip Seymour Hoffman says, “We’ve put an explosive charge in your head.” Cruise’s agent Ethan Hunt is sweaty, dirty, bloody, groggy, and manacled to a chair. We’re already at the climax of the film, and the personal hatred between hero and villain is instantly put into boldface when Hoffman puts a gun to the head of Hunt’s wife, whimpering through duct tape in blind panic. So, yeah, we’re not going for the straight roller-coaster here. Related posts: