A WAKE UP CALL TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE TO REASSERT OUR RIGHTS
Written: Aug 07 '07 (Updated Aug 10 '07)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: Great cinematography, directing, acting, and a spell binding plot.
Cons: Once again I could have seen more of the lovely Julia Stiles!
The Bottom Line: A tight movie that offers much more than just an exciting plot.
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| riseley's Full Review: The Bourne Ultimatum |
The Bourne Ultimatum is absolutely breath taking.
I'm sure that other reviewers have already howled about the heart pounding action, incredibly inventive cinematography and fantastically taut story line.
I will go into all of these aspects of this movie but it is the message of this movie that drives my five stars the most.
Who is the bad guy in this movie? The CIA. Don't worry. I am not spoiling anything. It is obvious in the first few moments of this movie that the CIA is the bad guy.
Why is this important? Because the United States Congress just passed another "wire tapping measure" that allows the CIA and the NSA to spy on U.S. citizens more thoroughly than ever before.
The Bourne Ultimatum must be viewed as a WAKE UP CALL to the American people to reassert the rights guaranteed to us by the Constitution of the United States of America.
You will go to this movie and be wowed by excellent acting, fantastic action scenes and one of the best car chase scenes in a decade. But the fact is that you must not fall asleep as you watch this movie. This is as much a message movie as it is an action movie and the message of this movie is this: in a time when our government is asking its citizens to spy on each other and commit crimes against liberty (CIA, NSA and Homeland Security drones pay close attention) we must be able to tell our superiors that there are some orders we will NOT follow.
There are some readers out there who might be saying, "Man, you are reading too much into this movie." To these readers I reply: "Or is it you that is not viewing it deeply enough?"
We can all order a box of popcorn and turn our brains off and be wowed by a movie like this. But in a world where surveys continue to show that over 80% of the people in our country believe that the official story of 9-11 is bogus, now is not exactly the time to turn our brains off. (http://stj911.com/).
In fact the director of this movie, Paul Greengrass, is howling at us to look at the facts of 9-11 as loudly as he can without being silenced. Some readers might say, "Now you sound paranoid, man." Do I? In 1993 Paul Greengrass directed a riveting little movie called When The Lies Run Out, that seemed to be about a simple domestic murder until all the links to the Iran-Contra affair came tumbling out in the dirty laundry.
Paul Greengrass clearly knows how to weave a political message into his action thriller.
I'm going to have to post a tiny spoiler warning here... I will try to keep things as general as possible but I need to show how Paul Greengrass is actually TELLING the audience to read more deeply into the film. Pamela Landy, played by Joan Allen, has been a Bourne ally in the past couple films and in this one she goes all the way... not that way children... but she literally hands Bourne exactly what he has been searching for during the entire series. (Notice I am being vague about it so this is not such a spoiling spoiler.) She gives him what he needs in code! She tells him his own birthday. Ostensibly she is aware that people are listening in on the phone call so she tells him a birthday... but she is not telling him a birthday... she is giving him an important address.
This is exactly what Paul Greengrass is doing for us as viewers of this movie. He is showing us a slick action picture with amazing close ups, some crisp, some blurry, often jittery camera work... as though he is literally saying: stay on the edge of your seat not because you care about Bourne, but because you care for the liberty of your own country. Wake up. Look deeply here.
In the first twenty minutes of this movie we see images of waterboarding -- for those of you who don't know what this is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterboarding. It is a technique that the U.S. interrogators used after they felt the ruse of 9-11 had lulled us all into a patriotic slumber. Then the Bush administration sought to make what is obviously torture legal.
In the first twenty minutes of this movie we are shown officials from the government being ordered to go do a "sneak and peek" -- basically a covert entry by the government into a citzen's home. Info here: http://www.law.uga.edu/academics/profiles/dwilkes_more/37patriot.html
In the first twenty minutes of this movie we are shown how the CIA can use Echelon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON) to listen to private phone calls, nab a keyword, locate the individual and then have him killed within a few hours.
I grant that the "have him killed part" is simply part of the Bourne Ultimatum's wonderful and gripping plot but the rest about illegal surveillance is absolutely true. This technology and these laws exist and these aspects of this movie are intended to agitate us into taking our freedoms seriously.
If you don't believe me, just listen to what the high ranking CIA officer Landy says when Bourne asks her why she is helping him. She replies, "This isn't what I signed up for." And what she means is that she did not sign up to serve her country so that she would be ordered to violate the rights of U.S. citizens.
I want to go into a specific discussion of the ending here because there is so much more about the ending of this movie that will support my claims that this movie is literally a connect the dots to our own lives and our own government. I have to say that if you are a fan of V is for Vendetta, you are going to flip over this movie. And for those of you who have never seen V is for Vendetta, please watch it, because it is a primer for learning how to see through a fictional piece of film making for the truth that is being communicated.
There. I used it. Truth. This movie says something true: people need to be decent to one another and we need to defend our rights.
It is a courageous thing in today's world when a movie contains a true message. I applaud the makers of this movie for creating a tightly written, superbly acted, fast paced movie that not only supremely entertains but reminds us that we live in the greatest democracy on earth and that we need to know when to tell an over reaching administration when enough is a enough!
Recommended:
Yes
Movie Mood: Action Movie
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Epinions.com ID:
riseley
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Reviews written: 50
Trusted by: 163 members
About Me:
Educator, novelist, screenwriter and syndicated political cartoonist...
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