It's rare that you watch an action movie that makes you laugh out loud at the crux of the action. Watching Jason Bourne hide at the back of the Thresher's off license in Waterloo station was such a moment.
And to top it all, in the hot heart of the frenetic action, as Bourne and a Guardian Journalist negotiate W. H. Smiths, placed slap bang in the middle of the Waterloo concourse, the loudspeakers announce that "The train to Chessington South will be leaving from platform 8."
"But, hey, that's my train!"
The Bourne movies have had quite a good stab at capturing a tiny bit of the spirit of places where they are set. This was important to their success. The Moroccan and Madrid stair wells, a modern German home, all these little touches.
But they could have gone a little further, they could have provided little holographic shards or narrative rather than just a bit of reflected shatter. "The train to Chessington South will be leaving from platform 8." Indeed. That was just a bit of shatter. The action should have meaning, no reason why it can't have meaning. Think of all those advertising executives who claw meaning out of the old meat of dead musicians, poets and artists.
Putting words into their mouth for a moment, they say things like:
"Advertising is art you know, it's postmodernist culture and I went to Chelsea Art School and anyway, the body is all that is real and if I subject high culture to the low, I am deconstructing, I am removing illusion and false ideology from the equation." And then they rip in. And they imagine they are doing a service - market evangelists; bloody market Jesuits.
I mentioned Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas on vinyl a while back on the Guardian Blog.And sure enough, one of these ransacking, purloining bastards must have been reading, because they co-opted Burton and Thomas into helping to sell their bloody car in an advertisement. I detest car ads, they get more and more winsome as owning a car becomes more and more reprehensible. Potted-tin swindling to the voice of Richard Burton. Fashion designers trawl through the streets and conventional men...to whom all days are feast days...trawl through blogs for ideas.
So yeah, action movies should have characterization. You don't need that much dialogue to do it. Michael Caine said he made love to the camera and that the camera knew you were making love to it. You could co-opt the audience that way so that even slight facial movements would reveal most of what you were thinking.
I almost like the new James Bond. I don't approve of him though. He comes with full body armour. You wouldn't want to Rolf (deep tissue massage) James Bond. He'd start weeping and coming out with all sorts of emotional crap. Too much to handle. Now you could go on a Russian drunk with him perhaps. That might be fun. Though, you'd probably end up despising him.
Believability and texture are very important, aren't they? Ridley Scott should make a spy thriller, it would be fantastic. He would choose some little revealing episode of modern history. Let's imagine - perhaps something about the S.O.E. and David Stirling.
From Wikipedia
"Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling DSO, OBE (November 15, 1915 - November 4, 1990) was a Scottish laird, mountaineer, World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service.
"Stirling was born at his family's ancestral home, Keir House in the parish of Lecropt in Perthshire (near Stirling). He was the son of Brigadier General Archibald Stirling of Keir and Margaret Fraser, daughter of Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat (a descendant from King Charles II of England). His cousin was Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat. He was educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge. A tall and athletic figure (he was 6 ft 6 in [1.98 m] tall), he was training to climb Mount Everest when World War II broke out."
But these are the political action thrillers that need to be told by Ridley Scott, who would be perfect for them.
Listen to this:
1. "Worried that Britain was losing its power after the War, Stirling organized deals to sell British weapons and military personnel to other countries, like Saudi Arabia for various privatized foreign policy operations.
2. "Stirling was concerned about the power of the trade unions so in 1975 he set up the organisation GB75, which he described as 'an organisation of apprehensive patriots' which would help the country in the event of strikes.
"He was knighted in 1990, and died later that year."
As far as I know Stirling was also involved in the war against the Mau Mau Kenyan nationalists and against the communist insurgency in Malaya, the unwinnable war the British won. This is the war they always go on about as the success for the "Hearts and Minds" tactic, but it ignores the fact that the Communist insurgents were also defeated because they were mainly Chinese Malays, restricted to one community.
You could squeeze at least 10 thrillers out of David Stirling's life. Moreover, he was charismatic and a highly effective man of action who would have second-guessed Jason Bourne onto a mortuary slab before you could say "Give me a tumbler of The Macallan," Stirling's favourite tipple, I think. 250 successful sabotage attacks in the desert. Now that's got to be in the Guinness Book of Records, hasn't it.
And these thrillers definitely don't require dumbing down. Quite the contrary! Try something with a little political context and bite to go with the bloodshed, for a change. It's time thrillers went back to the intelligence of John Le Carre. Ludlum is definitely declase. And if I am going to look at a thriller through the eyes of some of the best fixers for capitalism, let it at least be through the eyes of my fixers, British imperial and post-imperial ones.
To hell with the CIA as the Yin-Yang, home for heroes and antiheroes. They are more Cheech and Chong. We should be into our own shit here in the UK. And there is an awful lot of it, after all.
And to top it all, in the hot heart of the frenetic action, as Bourne and a Guardian Journalist negotiate W. H. Smiths, placed slap bang in the middle of the Waterloo concourse, the loudspeakers announce that "The train to Chessington South will be leaving from platform 8."
"But, hey, that's my train!"
The Bourne movies have had quite a good stab at capturing a tiny bit of the spirit of places where they are set. This was important to their success. The Moroccan and Madrid stair wells, a modern German home, all these little touches.
But they could have gone a little further, they could have provided little holographic shards or narrative rather than just a bit of reflected shatter. "The train to Chessington South will be leaving from platform 8." Indeed. That was just a bit of shatter. The action should have meaning, no reason why it can't have meaning. Think of all those advertising executives who claw meaning out of the old meat of dead musicians, poets and artists.
Putting words into their mouth for a moment, they say things like:
"Advertising is art you know, it's postmodernist culture and I went to Chelsea Art School and anyway, the body is all that is real and if I subject high culture to the low, I am deconstructing, I am removing illusion and false ideology from the equation." And then they rip in. And they imagine they are doing a service - market evangelists; bloody market Jesuits.
I mentioned Richard Burton reading Dylan Thomas on vinyl a while back on the Guardian Blog.And sure enough, one of these ransacking, purloining bastards must have been reading, because they co-opted Burton and Thomas into helping to sell their bloody car in an advertisement. I detest car ads, they get more and more winsome as owning a car becomes more and more reprehensible. Potted-tin swindling to the voice of Richard Burton. Fashion designers trawl through the streets and conventional men...to whom all days are feast days...trawl through blogs for ideas.
So yeah, action movies should have characterization. You don't need that much dialogue to do it. Michael Caine said he made love to the camera and that the camera knew you were making love to it. You could co-opt the audience that way so that even slight facial movements would reveal most of what you were thinking.
I almost like the new James Bond. I don't approve of him though. He comes with full body armour. You wouldn't want to Rolf (deep tissue massage) James Bond. He'd start weeping and coming out with all sorts of emotional crap. Too much to handle. Now you could go on a Russian drunk with him perhaps. That might be fun. Though, you'd probably end up despising him.
Believability and texture are very important, aren't they? Ridley Scott should make a spy thriller, it would be fantastic. He would choose some little revealing episode of modern history. Let's imagine - perhaps something about the S.O.E. and David Stirling.
From Wikipedia
"Colonel Sir Archibald David Stirling DSO, OBE (November 15, 1915 - November 4, 1990) was a Scottish laird, mountaineer, World War II British Army officer, and the founder of the Special Air Service.
"Stirling was born at his family's ancestral home, Keir House in the parish of Lecropt in Perthshire (near Stirling). He was the son of Brigadier General Archibald Stirling of Keir and Margaret Fraser, daughter of Simon Fraser, the Lord Lovat (a descendant from King Charles II of England). His cousin was Simon Fraser, 15th Lord Lovat. He was educated at Ampleforth College and Trinity College, Cambridge. A tall and athletic figure (he was 6 ft 6 in [1.98 m] tall), he was training to climb Mount Everest when World War II broke out."
But these are the political action thrillers that need to be told by Ridley Scott, who would be perfect for them.
Listen to this:
1. "Worried that Britain was losing its power after the War, Stirling organized deals to sell British weapons and military personnel to other countries, like Saudi Arabia for various privatized foreign policy operations.
2. "Stirling was concerned about the power of the trade unions so in 1975 he set up the organisation GB75, which he described as 'an organisation of apprehensive patriots' which would help the country in the event of strikes.
"He was knighted in 1990, and died later that year."
As far as I know Stirling was also involved in the war against the Mau Mau Kenyan nationalists and against the communist insurgency in Malaya, the unwinnable war the British won. This is the war they always go on about as the success for the "Hearts and Minds" tactic, but it ignores the fact that the Communist insurgents were also defeated because they were mainly Chinese Malays, restricted to one community.
You could squeeze at least 10 thrillers out of David Stirling's life. Moreover, he was charismatic and a highly effective man of action who would have second-guessed Jason Bourne onto a mortuary slab before you could say "Give me a tumbler of The Macallan," Stirling's favourite tipple, I think. 250 successful sabotage attacks in the desert. Now that's got to be in the Guinness Book of Records, hasn't it.
And these thrillers definitely don't require dumbing down. Quite the contrary! Try something with a little political context and bite to go with the bloodshed, for a change. It's time thrillers went back to the intelligence of John Le Carre. Ludlum is definitely declase. And if I am going to look at a thriller through the eyes of some of the best fixers for capitalism, let it at least be through the eyes of my fixers, British imperial and post-imperial ones.
To hell with the CIA as the Yin-Yang, home for heroes and antiheroes. They are more Cheech and Chong. We should be into our own shit here in the UK. And there is an awful lot of it, after all.
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