Friday, September 07, 2007

Action Packed

As is my habit, this week I’ve been watching “popular films that everybody else saw years ago”, namely the first two Bourne films. I think we decided to watch them because of the excitement the third film seemed to be greeted with by everybody, and we wanted something easy-on-the-brain to watch following the festival exhaustions. I actually quite enjoyed the first one, the European locations looked good and it allowed me to contemplate the significance of memory loss and the strange workings of the human brain. The second one I enjoyed less – there didn’t really seem much to it, except a few big chases, very little to provoke thoughts. So I won’t be rushing to the nearest multiplex (shudders) to catch the third instalment.

In sharp contrast, I ended up at the Raindance Film Club on Wednesday evening. As the publicity for the Film Club says, there are 3 rules of Raindance Film Club:
Fab Film, 2. Free Admission, 3. Free Beers.
It really is surprising I’ve not managed to get myself along to one of these before.
The film this month was ‘Cavite’ a low-budget thriller about a Muslim American man who returns to his roots in Philippines to visit his mother and sister, only to receive a phonecall on arrival to say they are being held hostage. He is then guided around the area of Cavite by the voice on the phone, through an alien world of slums and violence, where he must obey the terrorist to secure his family’s safety. The plot was a simple premise and I’m sure Hollywood will at some point have done something similar but without the same intelligence.

There was also an interesting story behind the making of the film. The writers/directors were all set to go to Manila when their main backer pulled out, leaving them with no money to pay for actors or crew. But they made the decision to make the film regardless – one of them took on the lead role, the other became the cameraman. It was a bold move, but the film is still great. The titles are hilarious though as everything was pretty much done by these two.

As the subject matter suggests, this ain’t a barrel of laughs, but it is available on Region 1 DVD from Amazon.

3 comments:

M said...

Now I'm the only person left who hasn't seen any of the Bourne films.

Matt Damon simply doesn't excite me. But maybe I'll sit down and watch one to give him a chance to change my mind. I'm not optimistic on that front, however. To me, he's always just Matt Damon playing Matt Damon. His teeth are always far too big and white for me to find him believable in anything. I do, however, find him more palatable than Ben Affleck, who I simply can't stand in anything.

SandDancer said...

I find him rather bland which kind of suited the role of someone who doesn't know who they are.

I agree about Affleck - utterly charmless on screen and off from what I've read of him. There was a radio competition here once with three levels of prizes, the top one being the chance to met him, the bottom one being a rubbish bin. The person who won the bin said they were relieved to not have to meet Ben Affleck!

M said...

Affleck is the only person I know who actually generated public protest when he was (somehow) named 'Sexiest Man Alive' a few years ago by one of 'those' magazines. (Must've been a slow man year.) Women actually complained to the mag! That must have done wonders for his ego!