‘Bourne Ultimatum’ gives some moviegoers the shakes

With The Bourne Ultimatum, the week’s top movie, starring Matt Damon, most reviewers gave it top grades.  “Easily the best action thriller of the year,” proclaimed USA Today’s Claudia Puig.  Some other movie reviewers echoed that.

But few mentioned use of an irritating, non-stop, herky-jerky, hand-held camera, a technique relished by director Paul Greengrass.

For Grumpy Editor, the woozy result is like being on a pitching and rolling boat during a hurricane or standing near a fault during an extra-long 6.7 earthquake.  The camera trembles even when it comes to filming close-ups of documents for theater patrons to read.

At least two other reviewers were uneasy with Greengrass’s filming style.

William Arnold, movie critic, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, noted: “With virtually every sequence shot like a battlefield documentary --- from a jerky hand-held camera framed extremely closely --- and edited like an MTV music video, the movie is so surreal it's just not very involving. As an action extravaganza, it's busy but dull.”

Arnold adds, “Greengrass' effort to make his film the last word in tightly framed, nervous-camera action scenes is fairly disastrous. Most of the sequences are such a mess that we simply can't tell what's happening in them. The cumulative effect is boredom.”  Arnold concludes that the film “cries out for a few long shots to orient us as to what the heck is going on.”

Peter Rainer, film critic of The Christian Science Monitor, observes “Greengrass downplays the movie's travelogue aspects by repeating the bobbly, hand-held camera style he used on The Bourne Supremacy. It's not a style I'm fond of.  Instead of imparting a present-tense immediacy, it just makes me seasick.”

Grumpy Editor agrees, and suggests for queasy moviegoers, forget the popcorn but take along a barf bag.