The Meyerowitz Stories (New and Selected)

The word ‘Family’ came into English in the 15th century. As the years passed, many families found themselves in the midst of discord and distrust. And so the term dysfunctional family entered our lexicon many years later.

Amongst the many symptoms that have been used the one that comes most readily to mind is the word ‘conflict’. And many dysfunctional families deal with conflict by:

using criticism, contempt and defensiveness, along with putting up walls and looking for scapegoats.

Now in the world of tv, films, and theatrical dramas – conflict is a major component. As such, dysfunctional families are the meat and potatoes of a lot of what we watch on our various media platforms.

From The Simpsons to the The Sopranos to The Royal Tenenbaums, and from Oscar Winning films like Ordinary People (1980) to American Beauty (1999) – we can’t seem to get enough of these dramas or dramadies.

Lets add the Meyerowitz family to the mix. The film is called The Meyerowitz Stories. It opened in a limited number of theaters in mid October while simultaneously streaming on Netflix. At the head of the family is the patriarch Harold Meyerowitz with Dustin Hoffman taking the role. His claim to fame was more for being a tenured Bard College professor than for his varied art works.  Though if you ask him – he’ll be happy to tell you of the excellence of that art in what can be described quite simply as a very ‘Trumpian’ manner.

He was far less successful in his personal relationships. He fathered 3 children – now all adults – Ben Stiller, Adam Sandler, and Elizabeth Marvel have the roles.  His kids will tell you that each of them has a different mother – meaning that Dad, good old Dad, was divorced 4 times. At which point, Harold will correct who ever said it with – No, I was divorced just 3 times – the other marriage ended with an annulment.

Such is life with Harold Meyerowitz. Currently, Harold dwells with Maureen (played delightfully by Emma Thompson), who seems to be drunk or working towards that state of being most of the time.

Adam Sandler (as Danny) is down on his luck – divorced, jobless, and nearly broke. Ben Stiller, portraying the ‘successful’ brother Matthew, is deeply resented by Danny as apparently Matthew was the apple of Harold’s eye.  I said ‘was’ but ‘still is’ is likely still in play – if you ask me.

Elizabeth Marvel is Harold’s third child, or maybe she was the first. She’s Jean Meyerowitz and she appears to be in a permanent state of depression.  Her role is underwritten and she looks as if her costumer and her make up people turned her on to the set as a female sad-sack. I say that because she just hasn’t enough lines for us to know.

Well the set up of the Meyerowitz Stories is that each of the adult kids will all tell their own version of their stories, as in they each take a turn in narrating. Written and directed by Noah Baumbach, the film has its moments of levity. Truly there’s not a lot of laugh-out-loud moments but at least there’s some.

Hoffman gives a stand out performance and that’s no surprise. All the best lines were written for him.  Stiller is at least competent but he hasn’t much to work with.

La La Land

 

So the Oscars roll in less than a week from today. La La Land has garnered 14 nominations – the most ever and is tied with Titanic and All About Eve for the most ever.

The most ever wins is 11 for Titanic in 1997, Ben Hur brought home 11 in 1959, and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King in 2003 walked away with 11.

I am not one to make Oscar predictions, but being as generous as possible, LLL shouldn’t win for Best Original Screenplay, shouldn’t win for Best Costume Design, and shouldn’t win for Best Male Actor – so I think 11 Oscars is the max for La La Land. Doesn’t mean I think they will win 11. Rather that I think the most they could win is 11.

I did not see the film back in December on Christmas Day when it opened, or even in January. It was only a few days ago on Wednesday (the 15th) that I saw La La Land and I was at the Cinemark 12 in Bluffton, South Carolina to do so.

Written and directed by Damien Chazelle, this is a film about Hollywood, and the California lifestyle (maybe work search is a better word) , and it slots nicely and initially into the classic boy meets girl genre.

Mia (Emma Stone) is a late twenties aspiring actress who hasn’t made much of an impact lately. On the side, meaning most of the time, she’s a barista at a local coffee imbibery.

Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) is a jazz pianist who must pound the ivories at various cocktail emporiums. playing songs he hates, and chafing about having to do so (he’d rather own his own jazz club where he could riff his own musical creations for as long as he wanted). The chafing continued right up to the moment when he could no longer do so; that is – until he was fired by the club owner (portrayed by J.K. Simmons).

It is on the night he’s fired, that Mia happened to be in that very same club. Nothing at all happened between them that night other than Sebastian brushing rudely past Mia on his way out. But that wasn’t even the first time they’d seen each other.

That was during a huge traffic tie-up on the Santa Monica Freeway ramp when 100’s of cars were gridlocked into a traffic standstill. But as things usually go in films – they’d be in the same place at the same time again and again – before they noted that those accidentally crossing of paths ‘might mean something’.

Once they met and began conversation, we didn’t expect it would take that long before a romance would start. And that proved to be the case.

Also expected was a change in their careers. Mia wrote and mounted a one-woman show ( at an L.A. version of an off-off-off Broadway venue)

which was sparsely attended but led to something else. Sebastian ran into an old friend

(played by John Legend) who already had a successful band. But at the time, he needed a keyboard man.

Lion

I’m not saying that the timing in my seeing the film Lion, and the announcement of the BAFTA Awards has any kind of deep meaning. What I am saying is the fact that I liked the film and I am decidedly ratified that the British Academy of Film and Television also liked the film.

Lion walked away with two BAFTAs which are Britain’s Oscar-equivalents. Dev Patel won for Best Performance by a Supporting Actor (film) and Luke Davies won for Best Adapted Screenplay. The film Lion is up for six Oscars and both Patel and Davies have been nominated in the same categories that they won their BAFTAs.

Lion is a film based on a true story (Mild spoilers ahead) . Saroo (played by Sunny Pawar) is a small child of five living in a very poor neighborhood called Ganesha Talai located in the vicinity of the city of Kwandha in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. His mother is a day laborer and Saroo helps his older brother to steal coal from rail trains which they can then sell in the neighborhood.

On a particular day, Saroo’s older brother Guddu decides that he will head off to a bigger place to do laborer work that pays more. Saroo begs to go with him, and despite the fact that little Saroo is really too small for the work, Guddu takes his little brother with him.

At a rail station, Saroo is instructed to wait for his brother, who promises to return. The small boy falls asleep. When he awakes there’s no sign of Guddu, so the small boy climbs aboard a parked train to look for his brother. Again he falls asleep. This train happens to be a newly de-commissioned train and will be driven empty to Calcutta which is 1600 kilometers away.

When the train finally arrives at Calcutta, 1600 kilometers and two days later, Saroo is not only without his brother, but is literally as lost as one can be. He does not speak Bengali, the local language, he doesn’t know his own surname, his mother’s name, nor can he accurately describe the name of his neighborhood.

After a few days of hanging with a group of homeless street kids, and then being taken in by a woman called Noor, he is eventually ‘captured’ or maybe collected is a better word. He is taken to an orphanage that is described by other kids there as ‘a very bad place’.

That’s basically the first half of the film. Saroo will ultimately be adopted by a Tasmanian couple – the Brierley’s.

Sue Brierley is played by Nicole Kidman, and John Brierley by David Wenham. We see a bit of little Saroo settling in with Brierleys until the screen goes black for a longish 3-4 seconds before we see a graphic that says ’20 years later’.

Saroo Brierley is now played by Dev Patel. This begins the second half of the film, and at its core, it replicates the first half. Whereas little Saroo was a small uneducated child lost in a, to him, foreign city, Dev Patel’s Saroo has none of the disadvantages that his younger self faced.

But he will want the same thing, to return to his roots and find his original family.

The differences between the first half of the film and the second half come down to conventionality. For the viewer, we know as little as the young Saroo. We have none of the information that is asked of him. So for us , we are as lost as the onscreen child. Also as viewers we know that Saroo will survive. But despite that, the first half is more involving and interesting.

The second half is less involving and less interesting. The older Saroo is more than capable of acting on his dreams and remembrances. Plus he has the support of his adoptive parents as well as a girl friend (Lucy is played by Rooney Mara). He is going to distance himself from his supportive family and friends as he works through his dilemma of researching.

What I am getting to is that the child Saroo’s separation from his brother and mother is an external fact and that he has no tools at hand to work things through. But the older and adult Saroo’s problem is mostly internal. Yes it is a struggle for him, but he still has a roof, and food, and safety and security; so his way of dealing with it will be to work things out internally and then using his memory and a terrific computer tool – Google Earth – to solve his problem which is to finds his roots.

Allied

Allied is a term you don’t hear very often these days. While there are plenty of allies, or alliances, it is quite likely that when you hear the term ‘allied’ you will most likely think of a moving van company, or your thoughts will stray back to the WWII era.

Which is exactly where director Robert Zemeckis and screenplay author Stephen Knight have taken us in the brand new film Allied. The film has Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard as the leads. Pitt plays a Canadian called Max Vatan who is on loan to the British Royal Air Force, and Cotillard is a Frenchwoman called Marianne Beauséjour, who is in the French Resistance to be accurate.

We find both of them in Casablanca. Morocco, a then French colony under the control of the occupying Germans. It is 1942. Pitt, as Vatan,

parachutes in, landing in the desert, while Cotillard, is already up and running, as a smart and desirable member of the Casablanca high society. Which said another way means that she is hobnobbing with the German High Command in Morocco.

Vatan is picked up on a road that leads back to Casablanca. He’s given a suitcase which is filled with all the requisites – you know – passport, Letters of transit, cash, and of course weapons. His driver gives Vatan the intel just as he’s about to be dropped off at the tres chic nightclub, called The Rivoli,  in Casablanca.  Your wife will be in a purple dress. Look for the hummingbird.

And there she is. You can see the hummingbird’s wing at the bottom of the photo above. This is exactly what Vatan saw. Max is going to be passed off as Marianne’s husband who after many months in Paris is now able to join his wife in Casablanca.

So the tale is now in motion. There’s some concerns about Vatan’s French accent, (in the film he’s Canadian after all, but his ‘wife’ thinks he sounds like he’s from Quebec rather than Paris) and some other hurdles will come their way – but hopefully, they will be able to complete their assignment which is to assassinate the German ambassador.

Now that seems a fine set up for the movie. But the problem is that this part is only the first half of the movie. There’s a second half and almost all of that takes place in London and the some suburbs called Hampstead and Hampstead Heath.

While the first half is about the mission it is also about Pitt and Cotillard’s characters a) getting to know one another, 2) getting to care for each other, and 3) falling in love. It’s near perfection. Every box has been checked and every mark was hit. Exotic location = Yes. Spies and espionage – Yes. Action – Of course. And the love-story part.

Pitt and Cotillard get to wear the most beautiful clothes imaginable. Pitt? You’d never know he is 50 in real years. In the film he doesn’t look a day over 38.  I’ve been a fan of Cotillard for some time, and in this film they certainly didn’t skimp on her costumes. Breathtaking is a word that comes to mind.

Snowden

Snowden is the latest from classic film director Oliver Stone. Yes, it is kind of a biographical character study of Mr. Snowden. But it is also a thriller of sorts, and a romance, and … a film that poses the questions about whether or not Snowden is a heroic whistle-blower or a traitor.

Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Edward Snowden and Shaileen Woodley as his g/f Lindsay Mills, the film opens in a room in the Mira Hotel on Nathan Road in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

Present are documentary film maker Laura Poitras (Melissa Leo), the Scottish journalist Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson), and the American Journalist Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto), along with Mr. Snowden. He’s about to turn over the files he had in his possession which detailed how the US Government was using sophisticated technology to keep an eye on its own citizens.

In short, this hardware and the programs written for it enabled the US to monitor every cell phone in the world.

But it is at that point that film give us a flashback to a far younger Edward Snowden.

This time he’s a member of a squadron of Special Forces trainees in boot camp. A slightly built man, we learn that the stress of carrying 80 pounds of gear was a bit too much for Snowden’s legs.

The doctor shows him the x-rays and tells him, it appears that you have been going through the drills with stress fractures in both legs for at least a couple of weeks.

The doctor is going to discharge Snowden from the active military. He tells him, you will have to find another way to serve your country.

Which leads Snowden to apply for a job at the CIA. This is where he meets Corbin O’Brian who will become his mentor. O’Brian is played by Rhys Ifans, who comes close to stealing the film away from Gordon-Levitt and Woodley.

I hadn’t seen much of Ifans. I think the only two films I saw him in were Notting Hill in 1999 and The Replacements in 2000. In both of those, Ifans came off as a somewhat, if not downright, goofy character. Here, he’s altogether different. This time out he plays like a younger Max Von Sydow. And he’s very good.

So much for our introduction. Snowden’s career in the intelligence industry has just begun. We are going to follow Snowden as he meets Lindsay Mills, then takes on posts as an intelligence contractor to locations like Geneva, Tokyo, and Oahu in Hawaii.

The film follows Snowden’s career from posting to posting. As a contractor he’s doing very well financially. He has a relationship with a fine woman, and yet – he’s not happy. His job involves long hours as well as travel and he can’t tell Lindsay anything of what he’s done, doing, or working on. It eats away at him.

And this is Oliver Stone’s main point.  His set up is that Snowden did not just blow the whistle for the sake of blowing the whistle. Yes, there came a point when he could no long reconcile to himself, that his specific work had nothing to do with events that happened, not only within the US but across the world as well.

Hands of Stone

While I’m not a huge fan of boxing, I have seen and liked more than a few boxing movies. Starting with Paul Newman as Rocky Graziano in Somebody Up There Likes Me, to Sylvester Stallone as Rocky, to Will Smith as Ali, and to Robert De Niro‘s great performance as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull – I’ve been there.

The newest film (or bio) about a boxer is called Hands of Stone. The film stars Edgar Ramirez as Roberto Duran and co-stars Robert De Niro as the legendary boxing trainer Ray Arcel. Usher Raymond plays Sugar Ray Leonard. Ruben Blades plays Duran’s manager Carlos Eleta.

Ellen Barkin plays Stephanie Arcel, Jon Turturro plays the mobster Frankie Carbo. And to round out the major players, Ana de Armas plays Duran’s wife Felicidad Iglesias Duran.

Also present are Howard Cosell, Don King played by Reg E. Cathey, and Ray Charles. Not in person but via actors representing them. Other figures from the world of boxing represented included Angelo Dundee, Gil Clancey, Ken Buchanan, Davey Moore, John Condon, and Bob Arum.

That’s quite a lengthy list of roles for this film. And therein lies the problem with Hands Of Stone. I think that by choosing the all-encompassing story of Duran who grew up in the rough and tumble slums of El Chorillo, a neighborhood of Panama City, we have too much to digest, there’s too many characters, and the story suffers for this approach. Not from bloat, mind you, the film runs only 111 minutes, but from its lack of focus.

Simply and additionally, Duran doesn’t come off as heroic, or for that matter even charismatic. When you talk about Ali, you always start with charismatic. And Rocky was the underdog hero, as was Graziano. De Niro who wowed us as the brooding and dramatic Jake LaMotta – was a guy that you could care about, as well as root for.

But we don’t get there with the fierce Edgar Ramirez as Duran. He got to a point where he was able to enjoy the fruits of boxing career. In effect, after defeating Sugar Ray Leonard by a unanimous decision in Montreal on June 20th, 1980 – he was on the top of the boxing world. Going into the fight, Duran’s record was 48-1 with 41 knockouts. The fight would be sold, hyped, and remembered as The Brawl in Montreal.

The film then moves to a quickly arranged, by Carlos Eleta, rematch with Leonard. It would be an 8 million dollar purse for Duran. But Roberto had partied and played too much. To fight Leonard again, Duran would have to lose about 35 pounds in just 3 months.

Arcel said it couldn’t be done, plus if the weight did come off, Duran would be seriously weakened. Arcel urged Eleta to cancel the fight. But Eleta had not only put Duran into a sweat box to make the weight, he had put himself in a different kind of box. Don King would sue for breach of contract if the fight didn’t go off.

So the fight went on, and if you were around at that time you know the outcome. Duran hadn’t the endurance to chase Leonard around the ring, nor had he the punching power to take Leonard off his feet and out. So in mid-fight – Duran quit.

No Mas was what was reported at the time, meaning No more, but the film takes great pains to report that Duran never uttered those words in the ring. Basically that’s the film.

I found other things that I didn’t care for as well, that’s being besides the overfilled story, and the lack of charisma by the actor playing Duran. While Ramirez was fine, Duran was an uneducated street kid from El Chorillo. He couldn’t read, and he was crude in many ways. He really couldn’t be labeled either heroic or charismatic. So to expect more from the actor was more wishful thinking than anything else.

The boxing action in the film was badly edited. We’d see arms in motion and then hear the thuds of the punches, but the camera was always panning out of the ring to pick up Arcel’s reactions and instructions. Or we left the venue to watch people watching the fight on TV screens. Or we would get a glimpse of the boxer’s wives reacting. In short the fight sequences lacked impact.

Florence Foster Jenkins

Today I received an indirect request to review the new Stephen Frears directed film, Florence Foster Jenkins, a bio-film (sort of) starring Meryl Streep, Hugh Grant, and Simon Helberg (of The Big Bang Theory fame).

The request came in a post called Writer’s Block Ruminations. Marty is the author of the post and his blog is called Snakes in the Grass. He’s not talking about folks you can’t trust, rather his blog title is an all too true reference to the fact that in Florida you literally have to watch where you walk, because, for certain, you are going to run into actual snakes, who as we all know appreciate the hot weather in Florida and they don’t mind slithering along, or crossing the sidewalks that we humans use on their way somewhere.

Anyway – ask ye shall receive. I fired up my car and hit the highway which would be I-95 (Exit 109 – Port Wentworth, GA). I was headed to Hilton Head Island where I would see Streep and friends in an 11:30 AM screening at the Park Plaza Cinema, a small movie house but one that is equipped with the latest in equipment to play the new digital age movies and with deluxe leather reclining chairs.  It was an uneventful 50 minute drive, and there was no line for tickets.

I had seen the trailer for Florence Foster Jenkins and so I knew the bare bones of the story. A well-off society woman  was a New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice. And that blurb was even kinder than the one we got on the actual movie poster – The Inspiring Story of the World’s Worst Singer.

I’m not sure why, but my expectations were that FFJ would fall somewhere between  the classic anarchism of The Marx Brothers (A Night at the Opera) and  the social relevance of one or more of Preston Sturges‘s snappy and smart films like Meet John Doe or Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

But Frears and his screenwriter Nicholas Martin took the high ground and the safe ground. The laughs did not come often because Grant and Streep played their characters realistically rather than in a stylized manner. The laughter would come from just two sources.

Helberg played Cosmé McMoon, an up and coming pianist who, for the stately sum of $150 dollars a week – almost a princely sum in 1944 – was hired on as Jenkins’ piano accompanist.

When he first sat down and worked the black and white piano keys, as Florence sang – a look of horror crossed his face which was then overtaken by a look of disbelief. Thinking he had signed on with a professional and accomplished singer, the thought that occurred to him right then was this – am I sabotaging my future as a musician by working with FFJ?  This would persist throughout the film.

The other was FFJ’s voice coach – one Carlo Edwards played by a terrific David Haig. He would be so effusive and positive when commenting on Florence’s vocalizations. That was the best yet, or you’ve never been better were decidedly non-complimentary compliments. But he was lying through his teeth. Which everyone in the room could see, and ditto for those of us seated in theater. Only Florence took his words as being sincere.

As a vocal coach for the Metropolitan Opera, Edwards definitely knew his business. But as he too had been hired by Jenkins’s husband, St. Clair Bayfield played by Hugh Grant, all Edwards could do was to follow Bayfield’s lead.  Bayfield never ever was anything but loving and supportive of his wife’s dreams and desires.

As she said, Music was and is my life. And after her gala one-night-only performance at Carnegie Hall, FFJ would say – People may say I couldn’t sing, but no one can ever say I didn’t sing.

Café Society

Life is a comedy written by a sadistic comedy writer.

That’s a quote spoken by Bobby Dorfman, the central character (played by Jesse Eisenberg) in the new Woody Allen film Café Society. And in my opinion, that was the best line of the whole film. And it could only have been written by Woody.

Café Society is not really about society, be it the Hollywood film industry crowd – where the whole town runs on ego, or the Manhattan high society that is home to the swells decked out in black ties with their trophy wives or the gangster’s molls awash in jewels and furs. Yes, these are the folks that do all the night club trotting, and champagne swilling, that enables them to be called rich.

In reality, Cafe Society  is a three-cornered love story with the ‘society’ continually flitting into the film, or showing up in the margins, in one scene after another.

There’s more of the Hollywood name dropping than you can imagine. Adolph Menjou nearly walked off the set. I’m working on a big deal for Irene Dunne. This is where Joan Crawford lives, and on and on.

I’m Bobby, says the eager Bobby Dorfman, finally gaining access into his uncle’s grand office. That is after his uncle had avoided him for a number of weeks.

Said another way, this is just Woody being Woody. When the young protagonist, Bobby Dorfman, out of the Bronx, finally gets some footing in the Hollywood Hills – he’s hired by his Uncle Phil Stern (Steve Carell).

Phil is a leading Hollywood mover and shaker, and king of the agent biz across town, and a philanderer. Bobby will be a glorified go-fer (agent to be) and a guest du jour at the various brunches, power lunches, and dinner soirees that Phil will either be hosting, or acting like a king in his court but on foreign turf. You just know that going in, that this sojourn in Bobby’s life can be expected to end badly for him, especially after he says, I’m not used to drinking champagne with my bagels and lox.

When he leaves La-la land, after the romance of his life (with Vonnie played by Kristen Stewart) crashes and burns, it seems that young Dorfman is just the on-screen presence (read that as a stand-in for Woody ) who returns to New York. Woody Allen has never been a big-fan of Hollywood. And Hollywood has never been an ardent admirer of Woody either. If he said as much before, he’s saying it again.

Speaking of which, much of this movie seems like so many of Woody’s recycled plot lines. Nothing new, just more of the same. Then again, Mr. Allen is 80 years of age, and although he has managed to maintain his one film a year output, many are saying that some of it seems a bit tired, or rushed, or incomplete.

Now this is not to say that Cafe Society does not have wonderful moments. Not at all. I think Allen loves the nostalgic look of Hollywood in the thirties’. Or Manhattan. Stuff that he missed while growing up in the Midwood section of Brooklyn.

In fact the costumes, the cars, the clothes and the sets are just wonderful to see. One can only imagine the work that went into getting the details so right. Like Phil Stern’s office. Like the movie theater where Bobby and Vonnie took in a film. Or the homes high up in the Hollywood hills.

Jason Bourne (2016)

The long-awaited and much-anticipated returns of both Matt Damon and Director Paul Greengrass to the Bourne brand of action films has happened. It’s been nine years since The Bourne Ultimatum’s successful release. So many of us were really primed for this new film

While the box office returns are so far excellent (an estimated 60 million for the opening weekend), there’s both good news and bad news. This new entry is called simply – Jason Bourne. and the one factor that has served the Bourne franchise so well over the years, is that they have a successful formula. That’s the good news as the box office returns have shown us.

Car chases, deadly hand to hand combat, exciting locales, as well corruption and intrigue within the government.

Jason Bourne (this is the 5th Bourne feature and the 4th with Matt Damon) clings almost religiously to that formula. In short, the more things change, the more they stay the same. And that’s also the bad news. Let’s look at some of the particulars.

After Bourne jumped into the East River from the facility on E 71st and then swam away, and after Parsons boarded a bus to somewhere out of Tangiers, Morocco in The Bourne Ultimatum – one would have thought that they’d have trouble reconnecting. But they did. Albeit nine years later.

Nicky who was in charge of logistics and the agents well-being is now capable of hacking. And how she found Bourne is not explained any kind of depth.

As for Bourne himself, these days he supports himself in a Fight Club kind of atmosphere and the his latest match is near the border between Greece and Albania.

Nicky tell Bourne that his own father was somehow involved with creation of Treadstone. And as expected Parson’s intrusion (hack) was detected. So off we go.

From this jumping off point it is another Bourne film which means Greengrass stuck to the formula. The film works quite well as an action/adventure. And by sticking to the formula, there were no surprises. As well as a distinct sense of this all seems so familiar. Including the shaky-cam aspects.

In Supremacy at the location known as Alexanderplatz, with its student protest march in Berlin became Syntagma Square in Athens where Greek citizens protesting,  often violently, the new Greek program of austerity. In each case, Bourne used the crowds as cover to make an escape. Below he has just taken Nicky off the tram at Alexanderplatz.

How about Bourne riding a motorcycle up and down steps in Tangier becoming Bourne riding up and down steps in Athens on a Greek police motorbike..

Or An unbelievable motor chase that we saw on the streets of Paris (Identity) and then in a tunnel Moscow (Supremacy) becoming a parking garage in Las Vegas.

Tommy Lee Jones has replaced David Strathairn who replaced Brian Cox as the sharp end of the stick. Jones was kind of subdued here, yet he retains all his gruffness and craggy visage, that we’ve come to love over the years.

And Alicia Vikander has replaced Joan Allen as the Bourne antagonist/supporter. Alicia Vikander may been cast in this key role just as a marketing ploy to attract some younger female viewers, and although she wasn’t bad, she didn’t look old enough, or seasoned enough to be running a CIA Operational Control Room like Joan Allen’s Pamela Landy.