Saw the Bourne Supremacy last night. It is, as they say, a taut thriller with an interesting character at its center, played by an appropriately scowly Matt Damon. But, oh when will Hollywood learn to edit? The showpiece car chase is an unintelligible swirl of blurry car shots cut together so rapidly that perception outpaces narrative. Just as you’re about to figure out which car is the one that’s smudgily swerving to avoid which other car, you’re shown another car streakily swerving out of the way of some other indiscernible patch of color. There’s a reason why Monet painted haystacks instead of chase scenes.

Then there’s the mano a mano fight scene between two guys dressed in black that consists of one black patch doing things to another black patch until one of the black patches stops moving. As my nephew pointed out afterwards: You have to hand it to the Matrix for at least letting us know who was fighting whom…for example, the chase scene on the highway in Matrix II (or was it Matrix III, or possibly Star Wars 12).

I haven’t seen a movie this badly edited since Is Paris Burning? in which they film opposing soldiers heading towards each other from both sides of the action so that sometimes the soldiers running to the left are the Germans and sometimes they’re the French. But that was just inadvertently incompetent. The Bourne Supremacy is downright arty.

Categories: misc dw