That's the date when Matt Damon gets all "teched up" in order to wage war, and generally go all-out ape shit, upon rich corporate assholes who have formed a new, awesome life for themselves on a man-made space station, while the poor suffer back on Earth, which, by the year 2154, is a raging shithole, in director Neil Blomkamp's follow-up to Elysium.
Wait a minute, I've seen this one before.
Truth be told, the trailer looks to be about on the same level of entertainment and quality as the nominated-for-an-Oscar-so-more-geeks-would-watch District 9, no?
And so, in early anticipation of the film, I am counting down Matt Damon's five best films.
5. Good Will Hunting
The movie that put both Matt Damon and best bud Ben Affleck on the map and won both their first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay as well as snagging Robin Williams a win for Best Supporting Actor. Good Will Hunting is a compelling human drama about a man who is faced with his own genius and needs to make a decision on what he is to do with it. High on compelling drama and low on visual excess, this is a writer's movie and working with his own words, Damon proved himself an instant movie star.
4. The Talented Mr. Ripley
A compelling character drama based on the Patricia Highsmith book, Damon continues to solidify himself as a leading man (although he was ignored by the Academy for this one). A taught and thrilling period piece revolving around sex, lies, murder and stolen identity. The film itself moves away from some of the dark humour that is evident in other Tom Ripley adaptations (namely 2002's direct-to-video Ripley's Game) but that makes the suspense no less compelling.
3. The Bourne Ultimatum
You can't really go wrong with any of the Bourne films but Ultimatum was the one that took the frantic hand-held visual aesthetic that was employed in The Bourne Supremacy and made it even better. This is a film that hits the ground running and never lets up. It is, quite simply, white knuckle thrilling from beginning to end. But it's not just the action that keeps the suspense pumping (although the scene in which the camera jumps across a divide and through a window is still a staple in action filmmaking) it's also the procedure. No one, after all, makes people doing their jobs more exciting than director Paul Greengrass.
2. Rounders
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You could easily write Rounders off as just a over-stylized look into the world of poker playing, but the film has continued to live on through the admiration of poker players and fans everywhere citing it's influence. Don't believe me? Just have a look at what the people over at Poker Junkie are saying.
1. Team America World Police
Wait, what? It has to be movies Matt Damon has physically starred in? You're fucking kidding me?...Okay, fine.
1. The Informant
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The Informant is Matt Damon's best performance. And it's not just because it's an I-got-fat-to-get-an-Oscar-role.
It's because Damon is able to perfectly capture both the strange humor of it's title character Mark Whitacre, but also the inherent tragedy that the film ultimately becomes about halfway through. Leave it to Damon to give a performance that is as equally subdued as it is intentionally hammy.
The Bourne Ultimatum is an exercise in great post-modern filmmaking from a man who has burned his way into our collective conscious as a filmmaker to be reckoned with. It’s a film that means business and doesn’t screw around getting to it. With airtight economy, the plot doesn’t fool with anything it doesn’t need and instead concentrates with intense focus on every detail it has, creating suspense not through over-the-top action (although there is a lot of that), but procedure. There is not one wasted moment in this film. It is lean, mean and to the point; so intensely good in fact that it leaves no room to question its own absurd plot. Most importantly, it is not smug or sly, it doesn’t wink or waste space with nostalgia because its only point of reference is itself. To see the Bourne Ultimatum as the finale of an ongoing narrative is to understand what the previous films were holding back. As a masterpiece of sound and handheld cinematography, of lighting and editing, director Paul Greengrass has single-handedly reinvented the spy-thriller genre. This is one of the year’s best films.
The amnesiac U.S. spy is back for his third outing in the Bourne Ultimatum. Once again Jason Bourne must outsmart CIA agents sent to eliminate him while on a personal quest to find his true identity once and for all. A plot description here would be futile. The plot is no more than a constant back and forth between CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) trying to track Bourne’s every move and Bourne always narrowly escaping.
What is fascinating about the Bourne Ultimatum is how the character of Jason Bourne inhabits his own universe. Bourne, although able to accomplish amazing feats like backing a car off a roof or ramping a motorbike up the side of a wall, is not a showoff. Matt Damon has taken his fair share of critical flack these days, being accused of one-note performances. However it is testament to Damon’s talent that he is able to step outside of his boyish good looks in order to play inert, one-note characters. In the hands of a charmer, Jason Bourne would be a second rate James Bond with no memory.
As played by Damon he is a cold, hard man who takes no pleasure in the acts of violence he must commit. A man of procedure and not action, Bourne gets the job done as efficiently as possible and moves on. And by presenting a man with no memory, the film inverts the typical action hero: Bourne has no back story, no long lost love, no tragic past and no alliance to anyone but himself, freeing the film of clutter to focus on the simplistic heart of the story: a government spy trying to find his true identity. The brilliance of the performance is that, even when Bourne is doing something fantastic, Damon’s acting is completely internal. If Bourne had more than one note, the film would be a mess.
What then makes the Bourne Ultimatum a great thriller is the starling degree of intensity which Greengrass employs in overseeing that his film mimics the very best traits of its main character: lean, mean and without excess. The Bourne Ultimatum is all business. Much has been debated about Greengrass’ use of a handheld camera, which shakes uncontrollably during action sequences, losing the focus as many would argue. And although I have been against the use of the handheld camera in action films for some time now, Greengrass has found a way to integrate the unstable focus of the machine as an integral part of the filmic experience, making the connection between the audience and Bourne as intimate as ever. This makes for the film’s most important asset. If we have no way of empathizing with Bourne over his self obsessed quest for identity, the film at least goes to great lengths to place us so intimately within Bourne’s universe that empathy becomes superfluous.
By appreciating the necessity of the handheld camera we can begin to see the precise architecture of the film’s action. Greengrass breaks down the ingrained perceptions of cinematic time and space. In delivering short, intense bursts of spastic motion from all angels, the so-called cinematic “fourth wall” becomes extinct, giving the camera a feeling of 360 degree peripheral vision and giving the audience the sensation of being vulnerable from all sides. In doing this, by keeping the action in the moment, by unchaining the camera from its role of passive observer and transforming it into an active participant in the cinematic experience, Greengrass has captured the visual essence of what it must feel like to be in Jason Bourne’s shoes: always on the run, always ready for action from all angels, and always buried under the pressure of needing to make convulsive decisions in split second moments of adrenaline fueled intensity. This is damn electrifying filmmaking.
For all the naysayers, there is no better proof of the film’s brilliant mechanics than in the single most stunning image this or any other action film this year has seen. It is a sequence even more startling than the infamous crane chase in Casino Royale because of both its sheer audacity and intimacy. The sequence requires Jason Bourne to jump off of a roof and through the window of an adjacent building in order to extirpate an assassin who is chasing Nicky Parsons (Julie Stiles). In Greengrass and cinematographer Oliver Wood’s most daring display of keeping the audience as close to the action as possible, just as Bourne makes the jump, the camera jumps with him across the divide between buildings, shooting him from behind on a 45 degree angle looking down. Cut to the reaction shot as Bourne crashes through the window and proceeds to an intense fistfight, shot mostly in close-up, and featuring only diegetic sound. That’s what makes the Bourne Ultimatum so stimulating and to-the-point. It is a film composed with none of the panache and wit of its action counterparts, but rather only nature’s most bare necessities: cold hard sweat and blood.