The Bourne Legacy (2012) or, Bourne 4: Hokum

♥

A dynamically designed poster for Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy

A governmentally employed assassin, who had previously been much used by a cynical retired Air Force colonel, now gets hunted by him, as he gets in connection with a skilled chemical engineer.

Edward Norton (The Invention of Lying (2009)) is a dreary heavy as the commanding, tight-assed colonel, but also the more sympathetic parts played by Jeremy Renner (Ingenious (2009)), - who at one point in the film is battered something awful, - and Rachel Weisz (Death Machine (1994)) can't alter the fact that this the 4th film in the Bourne franchise, - for the first time without Matt Damon as the now absent Jason Bourne, - is cryptic bordering on incomprehensible.
Without any introduction to the film's new elements, such as color-coded 'chems', parts of its dialog come across as advanced theatrical exercises. This is fatal, and it makes The Bourne Legacy seem incredibly long. The impressive cast here are gathered for what is essentially an audience-hostile fart in a can. 
The Bourne Legacy is written by twins Dan Gilroy (The Fall (2006)) and co-writer-director Tony Gilroy (Michael Clayton (2007)), based loosely on the Bourne book series by Robert Ludlum (The Chancellor Manuscript (1977)). It has two successful suspense scenes in it: One is a shooting scene that takes place in a laboratory with a mad Zeljko Ivanek (The West Wing (2003), TV-series), and the other is a high-speed car-motorcycle chase in Manila.

Related posts:

Tony Gilroy: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) or, Ginny's Fate: A Star Wars Calculation (co-writer)
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED V]
2012 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 125 mil. $
Box office: 276.1 mil. $
= Flop
[The Bourne Legacy premiered 30 July (New York) and runs 135 minutes. Matt Damon would not do a Bourne film without Paul Greengrass, who directed the 2nd and 3rd film and decided against doing the 4th. Tony Gilroy had written scripts for the first 3 films and was promoted to also direct the film, which takes place partially during the events of the preceding The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). Shooting took place in the Philippines, including in Manila, in Seoul, South Korea, Alberta, Canada, New York and Chicago, Illinois from September 2011 - ?. The film opened #1 to a 38.1 mil. $ first weekend in North America, where it stayed in the top 5 for another 3 weeks (#2-#2-#4) and grossed 113.2 mil. $ (41 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were the UK with 17.4 mil. $ (6.3 %) and China with 16 mil. $ (5.8 %). Roger Ebert gave the film a 2.5/4 star review, equal to two notches better than this review. Greengrass and Damon were lured back for a 5th Bourne movie, Jason Bourne (2016), which did not feature Renner and was a box office success. Tony Gilroy has stayed away from directing since the film; instead he has returned as producer of the great Nightcrawler (2014), consulting producer on House of Cards (2015-16) and co-writer of The Great Wall (2016) and Rogue One (2016). The Bourne Legacy is rotten at 56 % with a 5.9/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of The Bourne Legacy?

Top 10: Best car chases in movies reviewed by Film Excess to date

 
1. What's Up, Doc? (1972) - Peter Bogdanovich

2. The Blues Brothers (1980) - John Landis

3. Bullitt (1968) - Peter Yates 

4. Dirty Harry (1971) - Don Siegel

5. Death Proof (2007) - Quentin Tarantino

6. Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) - George Miller

7. Diamonds Are Forever (1971) - Guy Hamilton

8. Duel (1971)  - Steven Spielberg

9. Drive (2011) - Nicolas Winding Refn

10. Nightcrawler (2014) - Dan Gilroy

Other movies with car chases reviewed by Film Excess to date (in alphabetical order)

21 Jump Street (2012) 
A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
The Car (1977)
The Dead Pool (1988) 
Die Another Day (2002) 
The Dukes of Hazzard (2005) 
Fast & Furious 5/Fast Five/Fast & Furious 5: Rio Heist (2011)
Get the Gringo/How I Spent My Summer Vacation (2012)
Jack Reacher (2012)
The Last Stand (2013)
London Has Fallen (2016) 
The Town (2010) 

[22 titles in total]

Previous Top 10 lists:

The best action movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best adapted movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best adventure movies reviewed by Film Excess to date    
The best big flop movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best B/W movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
The best true story movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 
The best big hit movies reviewed by Film Excess to date  
The best biopic movies reviewed by Film Excess to date 
Top 10: Best 'box office success' movies reviewed by Film Excess to date
 

Do you agree on the list?
Make your opinion known in a comment

2014 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Best of 2014

1. Boyhood - Richard Linklater

2. The Look of Silence - Joshua Oppenheimer

3. The Grand Budapest Hotel - Wes Anderson

4. Looking season 1 - Michael Lannan, creator

5. Calvary - John Michael McDonagh

6. Godzilla - Gareth Edwards

7. Magic in the Moonlight - Woody Allen

8. Nightcrawler - Dan Gilroy

9. Interstellar - Christopher Nolan

10. The Equalizer - Antoine Fuqua

Worst of 2014

1. The Monuments Men - George Clooney

2. Mr. Peabody & Sherman - Rob Minkoff

Other reviewed titles:

A Most Wanted Man 
Dumb and Dumber To
The Expendables 3 
Guardians of the Galaxy 
The Lego Movie 
Love Is Strange 
Non-Stop 
Sabotage 
The Salvation 
Sex Tape 
Speed Walking/Kapgang 
True Detective season 1
The Two Faces of January
X-Men: Days of Future Past 

Notes:

This is only a first draft of Film Excess' 2014 lists, because I have only seen and reviewed 26 2014 titles so far, which is far from enough to compile an accurate list. A more comprehensive list will appear on the blog by the end of June. This preliminary list does, however, feature some of the films of the year that have generally been recognized as the best of the year, namely Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel. The third pristine masterpiece of the year (found by me so far) is the less seen Danish-American-Indonese documentary The Look of Silence.
Behind these incredible films, 2014 gave us an awesome new TV-series in Looking, a kaiju smasher for the history books in Godzilla; Irish John Michael McDonagh moved up in the European - and world - director ranks with his great Calvary; Woody Allen charmed with a typical show of gentle force in Magic in the Moonlight; Dan Gilroy flashed an eerie contemporary story in Nightcrawler; Christopher Nolan bested last year's star-cruiser Gravity (in quality) with his vast Interstellar; and Antoine Fuqua and Denzel Washington gave us an irresistible vengeance thriller guilty pleasure in The Equalizer. Out of the list are other great films such as the western The Salvation, the airborne thriller Non-Stop, the animation The Lego Movie and Danish coming-of-age Speed Walking, besides a slew of other good films. 2014 has already been a joyous film year, and one with very few bad films found so far. But they will surely appear as I venture boldly further down into the year's cavern.

Perhaps the next, more elaborate 2014 lists will include some of these titles from my 2014 watch-list, which I literally can't wait to watch:
The Overnighters, Obvious Child, The Babadook, Alive Inside, The Skeleton Twins, Life Itself, Dead Snow 2: Red Vs. Dead, What We Do in the Shadows, Cesar Chavez, They Came Together, The Way He Looks, Kelly & Cal, We'll Never Have Paris, Zero Motivation, Rob the Mob, Walk of Shame, Grace of Monaco, Mr. Turner, The Fault in Our Stars, Force Majeure, The Homesman, Mommy, Maps to the Stars, Kick, Tammy, Hector and the Search for Happiness, Birdman, The Imitation Game, St. Vincent, The Humbling, Before I Go to Sleep, While We're Young, The Good Lie, Tusk, This Is Where I Leave You, I Am Ali, Citizenfour, Serena, Sex Ed, Selma, Annie, Unbroken, The Interview and Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks.

- Happy New Year!

Other years in best and worst lists:

2013 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2013 in films - according to Film Excess
2012 in films - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 
2012 in films - according to Film Excess 

Please, make a comment on Film Excess' 2014 lists
What have been your best and worst 2014 movie experiences?
What has surprised positively and what has disappointed you?
Any movie or TV-series that needs to be on Film Excess' watch-list?

Nightcrawler (2014) or, Lou Bloom's Los Angeles

♥♥♥♥♥

A hip, artsy poster for Dan Gilroy's Nightcrawler

 

Nightcrawler is the much talked about directing debut of writer/director Dan Gilroy (The Bourne Legacy (2012)), a dark Los Angeles-set thriller character piece with some implicit societal and media-directed critique.

Lou Bloom is a young, ambitious entrepreneur, who one night stumbles upon the world of crime and accident video capturing, which he gathers is a profitable line of business and thus enters with keen enthusiasm and a ruthless eye for business.

Jake Gyllenhaal as the title nightcrawler [a term used in the film for these freelance video-recorders] heightens the film with a performance that is electric and demands attention. He lost 20 pounds for the role, making him appear eerily skeletal, and the fine actor hasn't been this good since Donnie Darko (2001). The cool-to-the-core sociopath that he portrays has some of the charm of Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), although that film was less successful with its source material (Bret Easton Ellis' great novel) and the character of Bloom also never becomes an actively misanthropic psychopathic killer as Bateman did, though one could certainly see him spiral out of control. Bloom is manipulative and lacks an ethical or moral compass; he also stands out as a capitalist shark version of the American dream, who from a certain advantageous angle may appear merely 'driven' and 'ambitious'.
Nightcrawler is disquieting, because Bloom is obviously so good at what he does; commanding people's attention and getting his agenda heard and pushed through, with impunity: He grows through determination and an undeniable rhetorical talent, - as well as an absence of any moral restraints, making him a potentially highly dangerous individual. Gilroy has written Bloom's venture into this guerrilla video-capture world so that his criminal behavior is laid bare up-front, but leaves it up to us to sanction this character flaw, saddled up with Gyllenhaal's charismatic performance. Bloom teams up with an easy subject of his manipulation, a desperate homeless man played terrifically by Riz Ahmed (The Road to Guantanomo (2006)).
Nothing in Nightcrawler seems exaggerated beyond realism, which also raises its level of suspense. In our digital, over-mediated world of today, we may think as we watch the film; what is to say that something like this isn't happening in our city right now?
The troubling success of Bloom comes from his relation to a TV channel executive producer played by Gilroy's real-life wife Rene Russo (In the Line of Fire (1993)) in what nevertheless seems a brilliant piece of casting. Russo has 'grown' one of those Hollywood-actress faces with obvious signs of unnatural meddling with nature that suits this character perfectly, - and, more importantly, she is still an excellent and sexy actress. Bill Paxton (Aliens (1986)) is also great as a tech-enthused competitor in some of Nightcrawler's many darkly amusing scenes.
The media critique of Nightcrawler may shortly remind folks of Network (1976), however, this film doesn't serve its point nearly as polemically as was done in the 1970's movie, as the focus lies on the character of Bloom primarily.
Nightcrawler becomes wildly exciting, as things invariably escalate. It is an excellent production, an adult story that creeps on you for all of its 117 minutes and stays there for a good while afterwards.
 

Watch the trailer for Nightcrawler right here

Cost: 8.5 mil. $
Box office: 50.3 mil. $
= Huge hit
[Opening 2nd in the US behind the horror flick Ouija (2014), Nightcrawler is sneaking its result up at domestic and global box office.]

What do you think of Nightcrawler?