fine whine

In the last two days I have watched as many movies. This in itself is unremarkable. What is vaguely worthy of note is that both movies had protagonists who suffered from amnesia.

Neither movie was all that memorable, suitably enough.

In reverse order (shades of Memento) they were The Bourne supremacy and The man without a past (or as they call it in Finland, Mies vailla menneisyyttä).

They shared neither language nor genre, and both of them failed to be all that memorable, if you'll pardon the pun.

One stars Matt Damon as Jason Bourne, the man who spent another entire movie not knowing much about himself, and though this time they ratcheted up the intrigue a couple notches (and didn't bring back Franka Potente and Clive Owen) it still didn't grip me quite the way they probably think Bourne's story should. Many a critic has lambasted the cinematography of the car chase near the end, so I'll weigh in merely to say that it was dull beyond the potential of tight angles and quick cuts.

I've read bits of Ludlum (though not the Bourne saga) and I'm betting that I could probably, given the chance, imagine a better chase while reading the book, if even one is in there. After all, the filmmakers have taken their share of liberties in updating the decade(s?) old books to the post Cold War era.

Aki Kaurismäki takes the other path in his film about a man who has misplaced his past. Though it too is apparently the middle piece of a trilogy, it also stands alone as a slow, sad essay on the nature of what counts and those things that bring us joy and sorrow. Many a critic has championed this film as well, but as for me I say skip it unless you've got some major insites into Finnish humor and culture that I don't. Or at least a lot of patience.