The Bourne Legacy (2012)

2/5

The Bourne Legacy, the fourth Bourne movie, has a very confusing plot. The general outline is that a covert government agency is killing all their secret operatives after a benign-appearing YouTube video is leaked. One black ops agent (Renner) escapes death and travels to the Philippines with a scientist (Weisz) so that he can inject himself with a virus. Yes, it does sound absolutely preposterous. And to make matters worse, there are simply too many story lines and too many characters to keep track of. The director, Tony Gilroy, seems to focus on the wrong things in each scene, as if uncertain what the movie is about. He goes back and forth between time and place way too frequently without any real explanation or clear motivation. This results in an extended second half that doesn't make sense within the film's logic, where seemingly ever character (big, small, good, bad) takes enormous risks out of proportion to expected benefits.

Superficially, the movie looks very exciting. There is a lot of anger and yelling, a lot of drama and histrionics. But the action scenes aren't so much exciting as they are filled with loud action-y music. Instead of gunfights and fistfights, we get running and chasing. Instead of action, we get super-fast cuts. I estimate that the average length of each shot is around 1 second. Not to spoil the movie, but Matt Damon never appears in it, although his character is unendingly discussed peripherally. To make matters worse, it has an extremely unsatisfying ending. Do not recommend.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1194173/

A Most Violent Year (2014)

4/5

JC Chandor's A Most Violent Year takes place in New York City in 1981. A rising oil businessman (Isaac) finds himself at a difficult crossroads. His drivers (Gabel) are being carjacked and he is losing thousands of dollars in stolen oil; the DA (Oyelowo) is looking into his company for criminal misconduct; and he risks losing a $1 million deposit on property after the bank backs out of a loan.

Whether you call it an homage or piracy, the movie takes a number of cues from The Godfather, which I won't enumerate here. But it does it all in a different era; it's learned from its predecessors. It feels like what The Godfather Part III wanted to be.

It is visually and thematically rich, polished and perfected by studies of the countless gangster movies that came before. Soft sepia tones belie an unspoken intensity and slow pacing hides an unrelenting momentum. This movie defies expectations--violence is not the same as action--but rewards the patient viewer. The powerful finale perfectly encapsulates the entire movie: a quiet moment of reflection punctuated by a gut-wrenching act of violence, a striking visual composition with enormous emotional resonance, and a morally ambiguous denouement to leave the saga ever unraveling.

The acting is spectacular--there is nuance and subtlety, even in loud moments of vitriol and rage--and the cinematography is breathtaking. But it is not a perfect movie. Some early scenes felt off kilter; a few sideplots felt unnecessary and unresolved; and parts of the movie felt boring. But on the whole it's a much more mature project compared to Chandor's earlier Margin Call, and it's definitely a film worth watching.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2937898/

Drive (2011)

2/5

Drive is an over-stylized mess of a movie without a clear focus, although it's directed as if it had one. The threadbare plot is too simple and pointless to warrant a sentence reiterating it; suffice it to say it's about crime, revenge, and a little bit of driving (but not as much as the title would lead you to believe). Ryan Gosling plays the strong, silent superhero who "doesn't carry a gun" but has no qualms with stomping skulls in. He plays it well--his acting is probably the best part of the movie--but he does it under misguided direction from Refn. He alternates between stoic and angry and child-like on a dime, but doesn't do it in a convincingly personal or meaningfully complex way, just on the whims of the plot so we can see some sensational yelling or killing at random intervals.

Refn directs the movie like a comic book, with striking visuals and superb juxtaposition telling the story in place of dialogue. The 80's synth music and pink typography give it a retro feel, but it feels a little out of place. I commend the style, but I guess I came into the theater expecting the maturity of a novel. I typically don't like violence without a purpose: I want a movie to give me something back to make up for assaulting my senses. But Refn's goal with Drive seems simply to shock and appall you without any substance beneath the special effects. All in all, I cannot recommend this movie.

Also, it stole its tagline from No Country for Old Men.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0780504/