The Bourne Ultimatum
I don’t remember how long it was after leaving Waterloo Station when the first wave of nausea came over me. All I knew was that the culprit’s name was Greengrass, and that I was going to have to avoid his works from this point forward.
One would expect that the great-grandson of Sherlock Holmes would be entirely comfortable in London, of all places, as it provides much of the early-on setting for the movie “The Bourne Ultimatum.” But this is not the solid, stately London of old. No, this is the jerky, hand-held London of director Paul Greengrass. The movie’s plot eventually passes from London to Madrid, and somewhere in the Madrid scenes I found myself fighting the urge to purge.
Not that “The Bourne Ultimatum” is a bad movie. Quite the opposite – its tight story-telling and constant action actually drew me in and made me forget to watch out for the side-effects of the shakey camera-work, which one notices early on. But like those other shakey-camera classics, “Trekkies” and “The Blair Witch Project,” the interaction of the film’s motion with my visual cortex found me suddenly questioning the quality of the popcorn, before I recognized that old feeling of motion sickness working its way in from the frontal lobes.
After several moments of sitting with eyes closed, trying to fight the feeling while listening for plot details, I admitted defeat. “The Bourne Ultimatum” had accomplished what few movies had ever done: driven me from the theater, beaten, yet still curious as to how it all worked out.
It would be hours before the nausea passed.
What Great-grandfather Sherlock would have said:
“Give me something to ease my pain.”
Past Investigations
An Introduction to
Mr. Sherlock Holmes IV
Fantastic Four:
Rise of the Silver Surfer