The Bourne Identity

Didn't see this on my list so, uh, just dropping a few thoughts here. It was hyped up like crazy when it hit US theaters, basically getting the best reviews of the year... so yeah, I went to the cinema to check it out.

You can tell Meirelles is doing her thing; visually, it feels like a spiritual successor to City of God. Some of those editing sequences are styled almost identical to City of God—not sure if it's the same editor, but the director clearly loves that vibe, even if they overdo it in The Bourne Identity... like that hyper-intense cooking sequence.

On one hand, the movie is an ode to Africa, with this gritty documentary feel. Shaky cam everywhere, which gets annoying sometimes—especially during the New York City scenes where a steady shot would’ve worked better as a contrast to Africa. It’s just jittery and hard to follow through a simple lunch scene. Plus, the themes feel docu-style, from the landscapes to the people and modern African life, from the slums in their "megacities" to remote villages left behind by tech. On the other hand, there's supposed to be a core romance. But there isn't. And that totally kills the believability.

The main plot involving big pharma and a conspiracy could be super interesting on its own (and it is, mostly), but the characters meant to lead us through it—Fiennes and Weisz—are pretty thin. They don't get nearly enough screen time to establish their relationship. Since the whole plot unfolds through the lens of their love, that connection needed more breathing room to actually work. Honestly, I felt more for Jack and Rose in Titanic than I did for these two. Just watching them against those African landscapes could have easily carried the film for another thirty minutes if needed.

I will say, the way the plot unfolds is good. It's slow, step-by-step, almost like the genre shifts from start to finish until it's basically a straight-up political thriller. The directing handles that transition well, though some parts lean a bit too hard into action/thriller territory when they don't need to. But the conspiracy itself is convincing; it feels like it's based on a real news report (kind of like Traffic) rather than a John le Carré thriller. Such a shame about the romance at the start, though. If that had worked, the whole movie could've been a higher rating... Still, worth a watch. There aren't enough political dramas/thrillers lately.

John le Carré is cynical toward all authority figures, and this film trips up by trying too hard—artificially, I should say—to force an emotional connection with the protagonists. It also gets swallowed by its own plot; those dialogue-heavy explanations near the end feel increasingly forced. Personally, the activist undertones and the sentimentality rubbed me the wrong way—plus, after a while, that stylized color desaturation at certain locations really started to grate. It’s not a total disaster, but it definitely could have been better.

I haven't actually read the book, so I can't say much about how the novel stacks up or what John le Carré's style is really like. But honestly, an adaptation can go any which way. It wasn't even that I had an issue with them trying to build a bridge between the audience and the characters—it’s just that they never actually finished building it. The plot basically swallowed everything else whole... the movie rushed into all those conspiracies and political thriller tropes way too fast.

Anyway, if you're talking about the visuals, that cold, sterile white New York City vibe versus the vibrant colors of Africa works pretty well, at least. I didn't really catch any other weird color grading issues. It's definitely "in your face," but it makes sense for the story. If I had one gripe, maybe they could've been a little more subtle with the color palette... but whatever.

slyrider16 said:I haven't read the book—so I can't speak to the novel itself or how John le Carré writes in general. But adaptations? They can go any which way. My issue wasn't even the attempt to build a bridge between the audience and the characters—it's just that the attempt never actually landed.

Exactly. And that’s because his approach to the protagonists is nothing more than pure stereotype.

slyrider16 said:If you mean the visual contrast—that cold, sterile white New York City versus the vibrant colors of Africa—it works fine. I didn't notice much else regarding color desaturation. It's very "in your face," sure, but it serves a purpose. If anything, one could argue it could have been handled with a bit more subtlety.

There isn't a single shot in this movie that hasn't been color-graded. I don't mind the contrast between New York City and Africa, but it started feeling redundant—almost heavy-handed. That’s just my take, based on the film as a whole.

northerncrane4 said:Exactly. And it's because his take on protagonists is just straight-up stereotypical.

But given how little time they actually give the characters (not the plot) to breathe, there wasn't much choice. You gotta lean on stereotypes to get the point across fast. The issue here is we aren't watching some lighthearted comedy like *American Pie*, we're looking at a movie with actual artistic ambitions. The writer of *The Bourne Identity* shouldn't have let that slide. Less nitpicking about the plot and more breathing room between those plot beats—giving more screen time to the two leads and their dynamic—and they'd be on the right track...

northerncrane4 said:There isn't a single shot in this movie that hasn't been color-graded. Nothing wrong with contrasting New York City and Africa, but it felt repetitive. Just my take, based on the whole thing.

Look, there's hardly any movie today—unless it's amateur hour or some indie dogma crap—where every frame isn't color-corrected at least a little bit. You said it only started getting under your skin as you watched, but the movie does this from the very first frame, super consistently. Honestly, it's either all or nothing with stuff like that. Maybe it was something else bugging you, like the plot issues over the character work, and once that frustration set in, everything else just started looking bad too...

The Dude said:Given the incredibly tight timeframe allowed for character development—not the plot, mind you—there wasn't much room to move beyond certain tropes. You have to lean on stereotypes sometimes; they’re the fastest way to signal exactly who a character is.

I’m talking about the protagonists—there are only two, really—and they stay stuck in their stereotypes for the entire film. She’s just the earnest revolutionary, he’s the guilt-ridden husband, and that's basically it.

The Dude said:The screenwriter for The Constant Gardener really missed the mark here—too much focus on overcomplicating the plot. If they’d just dialed back the twists and allowed more breathing room between them—giving more screen time to the leads and their chemistry—the movie would have actually worked.

Amy Mendoza25—it felt like the whole movie just dragged. Nothing really happens for way too long, and then in the final quarter, it tries to do everything at once—trying to knot and untie itself through a series of forced dialogues.

The Dude said:There isn't a single film out there today—unless you count amateur hour or some pretentious dogma—where every frame hasn't been meticulously color-graded at least a little bit.

Is there really not a single frame here that hasn't been hit with extreme color grading—not even a hint of subtle retouching?

The Dude said:You claimed it took time for this specific film to start getting under your skin—but honestly, it gets to you from the very first frame. It’s incredibly consistent. In my view, there is no middle ground here—it either maintains that consistency throughout, or it shouldn't exist at all.

It’s all well and good for a moment—but the gimmick wears thin fast, even if they keep riding it. Of course, he couldn't just drop the stylized aesthetic overnight—but then again, maybe he shouldn't have leaned into it in the first place. To begin with—Honestly—if that’s really the best he could come up with—he didn't exactly hit a home run. Not by a long shot.

The Dude said:It could be something else entirely—like that messy plotline that gets in the way of the characters—and once that initial wave of frustration hits, everything else about the film starts looking different through a new lens.

Exactly what I'm saying—if something else had caught my eye, I wouldn't have even noticed this.

northerncrane4 said:...Personally, I found that activist slant and the sentimentality a bit much, and after a while, the way they desaturated certain colors in specific locations really started to grate on my nerves. It’s not all bad, per se, but it certainly could have been handled better.

For me, the main issue was Rachel Weisz; she wasn't necessarily bad this time around, she was just incredibly grating in her earnestness. Someone more like Kristin Scott Thomas—someone with more charisma and perhaps less overt sensuality—would have been a far superior choice.
Though, then again, such a casting change might have failed to highlight the tension between the imperialist era and the Brit-pop, post-Diana vibe of England, which strikes me as the film's central theme: posthumous emotional maturation and the collapse of the old code.
I actually liked the movie, despite my initial irritation with cinematography that felt like a dressed-up TV drama. A National Geographic thriller. That opening love scene felt like a Benetton commercial. However, once the flashback concludes, the pacing picks up and the film becomes tighter, weaving its narrative and visual motifs into a cohesive whole. It still feels slightly Merchant-Ivory for the modern urbanite, but thankfully, that cosmetic camera work fades away. I found it quite fascinating how, in several scenes—mostly within his colonial estate—Africa possessed such a distinctly English, gray, and damp atmosphere.

ironcrane7 said:For me, it was specifically Rachel Weisz. Her acting wasn't even bad this time, she was just... annoyingly try-hard. Someone like Kristin Scott Thomas—more charisma, less sensuality—would have been a much better fit.

I don't know about that. They would've ended up with some modern version of 'The English Patient': less pathetic, maybe, but way more melodramatic. So fancy now. 🙂
To me, the movie is really Fiennes. He was great, even if he did fall back into that cliché role of the man destroyed by love. I think he was better in 'End of the Affair' than in 'The Constant Gardener,' but honestly, his performance here might actually be his best work. Not that I want to waste any breath talking about 'The English Patient.'

You’ve got a point, though clearly *The Constant Gardener* didn't leave much of an impression on me—or maybe I just repressed the whole thing deep in my subconscious due to some lingering trauma—because I don't see the connection to Kristin at all. But someone like the lead actress from *Wolf Creek*? Now she would be absolutely perfect for that role.

Meirelles is brilliant... the framing, the editing... technically, the movie is flawless. But let's be real, it works way better as a documentary than when it tries to force the emotion and suspense. It gets a bit defensive there—kind of like an away team playing in a hostile stadium, just hunkering down and hoping for the best (except maybe for the Lakers)... anyway, where was I? The movie is just a heavy watch to experience... yet he somehow pulled off an interesting film in a genre I usually hate. Either way, thumbs up 👍

I watched a movie yesterday and I’m so irritated I simply have to vent about it. 😠
Here’s the breakdown:
Theme: Fascinating subject matter, handled quite well
Camera + Editing: Excellent
Lead Actors: 🤮 🙂 🤮 🙂

The sheer stupidity and lack of depth in the main characters grated on me throughout the entire film. Rachel Weisz is lovely and natural, blah blah blah. But she is so hysterically intense that I wanted to slap her every time she started peddling her activist talking points.
Ralph, on the other hand, is such a slimy, pathetic weakling that it’s a mystery how he ever landed a diplomatic job or kept any woman by his side.
And finally—his death in the desert is so idiotic (meaning he is just that idiotic) that I decided he truly deserved it; having him taken out by assassins felt like justice for being such a loser.
Those flashbacks of their "happy love" are maximally nauseating, especially the part right before he gets killed.
Otherwise, I was very satisfied with all the other elements of the film. Carré wrote an engaging story and the director delivered it to the screen in a highly impactful way, but the lead actors just ruined it for me. 😠

Good grief—what kind of twisted luck is this? I somehow ended up deciding to watch and actually comment on a film that has been dissected by everyone from those self-proclaimed untouchable high-brow intellectuals on one side to the polished, sociological crowd on the other—though I suspect their true consensus will remain forever elusive 🙄
. Despite all that, this movie deserves an honest take, especially since some of the sheer superficiality being tossed around in this thread isn't even worth more than a quick toss into the trash 👋

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

At its core, the film is a romance. It’s not a thriller, it’s not a political drama, it’s not some adventurous travelogue, and it certainly isn't an anti-pharmaceutical activist pamphlet. Instead, it explores the relationship between two people—how it begins, how it evolves, and how it concludes—emphasizing how inseparable that bond is from the protagonists themselves. I suppose it might not be that difficult to film a convincing romance when you have actors like Fiennes, whose mere presence guarantees a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of raw emotion, or Rachel Weisz, whose entire career seems to defy any kind of cliché—someone who started out as (dare I say... unrefined!?) an action starlet and is now, in her thirties, effortlessly portraying a twenty-four-year-old idealist?!?! Honestly, there's nothing left to say there, other than a massive thank you for that level of talent 🙏
Perhaps it isn't hard to make a decent romance when you have a duo like this, whom you can leave on screen for thirty seconds at a time without worrying if the audience is going to start timing them with a stopwatch. But, if you want to craft an *excellent* love story, you have to build the emotional foundation on incredibly solid ground. And that is exactly what this director achieved; he constructed such an exceptional bond between these two somewhat eccentric individuals that the final piece of that architecture pierces right through the heavens 🙏
Everything unfolds slowly, step by step, until it finally culminates in the protagonist's wild, desperate move—using his own death as a final tribute to his late wife 😲 I have to admit, personally, his choice strikes me as somewhat disturbed and irrational, but I would probably have to be insufferably arrogant to dare deny him that right 🙏

From the very beginning, it is clear that her position is one of profound isolation and abandonment, a state she essentially chose through her unrestrained, almost reckless courage. Once she points the finger at her enemy, she suddenly finds herself utterly alone, deserted by all the companions she might have expected—only to discover, in her desperation and innate femininity, that her adversary, that composed American diplomat, is actually her true kindred spirit and her great love. He, meanwhile, trained in a restraint that perfectly matches his meticulous and patient gardener's nature, discovers in her a powerful, wild plant that requires a vast amount of tenderness and affection
Of course, they both realize it far too late.😢 And if all true loves are meant to be tragic, then this is a romance par excellence . 👍 👍 👍

Gregory Garcia said:Good grief, what kind of twisted luck led me to decide to watch and comment on a film that has been dissected by such celestial bastions of polished technical expertise on one hand, and glossy socio-cultural pedigree on the other—though, all things considered, they will likely remain incomprehensible 🙄
Despite that, the film deserves an honest critique, whereas certain superficialities on this thread deserve nothing more than a hasty wipe with a smelly tissue 👋

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

The film is, essentially, a romance. It isn't a thriller, nor is it a political thriller, an adventurous travelogue, or even remotely an anti-pharmaceutical activist pamphlet. The story focuses on the relationship between two people—the inception, the progression, and the conclusion of that bond, and how the relationship itself becomes inseparable from its protagonists. Perhaps it isn't particularly difficult to shoot a convincing romance when you have actors like Fiennes, whose mere presence guarantees a minimum of dialogue and a maximum of emotion, or Rachel Weisz, whose entire career seems entirely incompatible with any given cliché; she who started out as a (unpleasant!?) starlet in an action flick and who, now in her thirties, effortlessly portrays a twenty-four-year-old idealist. One can say little else there, except perhaps to thank her for the talent 🙏
Maybe, then, it isn't hard to make a good romance when you have a pair you can comfortably leave on screen for thirty seconds at a time without worrying if the audience will start timing those moments with a stopwatch. But if you want to make a great romance, you must timely establish the emotional architecture upon truly secure foundations. And that is precisely what this director achieved; he constructed an exceptional relationship between two somewhat unusual individuals in such a way that the final layer of that structure pierced directly into the heavens 🙏
And it all unfolded slowly, steadily, step by step, only to culminate in the protagonist's frantic final move, where he uses his own death as a final tribute to his late wife 😲 I must admit that, personally, his action strikes me as disturbed and mad, yet I would have to be irredeemably arrogant to dare deny him that right 🙏

From the outset, it is clear that her position is irreparably lonely and abandoned, a state she chose through her unbridled, borderline reckless nature. When she points a finger at her enemy, she suddenly and unexpectedly finds herself alone, deserted by all potential and expected companions, only to discover—in desperation and through her innate femininity—that her enemy, that composed American diplomat, is actually her true companion and her love. He, meanwhile, trained and schooled in a restraint that perfectly aligns with his pedantic and patient gardener's temperament, discovers in her a strong and wild plant that requires a vast amount of tenderness and affection
Of course, they both realize it too late.😢 And if all true loves are tragic, then this is a romance par excellence . 👍 👍👍

thanks!!
I haven't read a better post in quite some time... you really shut them all down with this one. Truly impressive. This thread should probably be closed now; I suppose any further comments would just be redundant.

Gary Adams3 said:This thread is closed. Any further comments are pointless.

Well, if the rest of the group (yourself, Gregory Garcia, and those of you alike) considers love and pathology to be essentially the same thing, then I suppose any further discussion is indeed redundant...

By the way, this movie is easily one of the most absolute messes I've had the displeasure of watching in the last year.

Look, honestly, when you see how people are picking apart The Constant Gardener, someone who just dropped in from Mars might actually think we've been getting nothing but cinematic masterpieces lately, and while this one isn't a total disaster, it’s definitely got its flaws. I mean, sure, fine, maybe give it a second watch if you really must?

I only see a flick this decent maybe once every few years, especially considering everything that's come out in the last decade. Gregory Garcia wrote a nice little post, but I can't bring myself to agree that this isn't a political thriller and all that. It’s pretty much everything under the sun, but at its core, it’s mostly just a love story.

Characters don't change? The husband stays the same? That's like walking into a room with red walls, a red carpet, a red sofa, and a red chandelier and complaining that there isn't enough red.

Is it vague? Is it a mess? Yeah, the movie is confusing, but that's what a good thriller is supposed to do, for Pete's sake. The way they dose out the red herrings is perfect, which is easily one of the best things about the whole thing.

Total classic.

Oh, boy...

Here we go again.

driftingeagle27 said:The way they dose out the red herrings is perfect; it's easily one of the film's strongest traits.

Red herrings, you say? And what exactly the real issue is, then..?

slylynx16 said:Oh, no...

Here we go again!

A red herring, you say? So what's the actual problem then..?

I was going by this definition—one of several on Wikipedia:

"in detective work, mystery fiction, and puzzle-solving, a false clue which leads investigators, readers, or solvers towards an incorrect solution"

driftingeagle27 said:...

So, the core problem is:

#1. The flawed critique of Big Pharma

#2. The plight of Africa #3

#3. The unrealistic, naive, and frankly absurd plot... Spoiler: Tessa is married, as we know. To a white man. At the 27-minute mark, she’s leaning against a fence, chatting with her friend, an African American guy (who is quite well-built!). By minute 28, we see her nursing. An African American baby! Naturally, her friend, an African American man, is right there beside her. But wait! Her husband, a white man, is also present (just on the other side of the bed)... At minute 29 (we now realize everyone is in some makeshift maternity ward), a second friend walks in... He hands her a fruit basket and offers condolences for the loss of her baby. She briefly—as if that were the least important thing in the world—says, "it was a boy," and then, with total indifference, gets back to her story (and her music!). By minute 30 (after the first friend leaves on his own initiative and she sends her husband packing—sending him out to fetch water, basically!), our Tessa, more determined than ever, tells her second friend about her "conspiracy theory" and her plans to take action regarding it (all involving the first friend, and all without her husband’s knowledge or consent!)... "A film with temporal shifts as drastic as this needs the patience to rest on its haunches for a moment to give the audience opportunity to take stock. Whether that means just setting its camera on a much needed tripod (a novel idea the film seems to loathe), or including some honest scenes of the emotional strain the characters are suffering through, or not including so many random details of the squalor of the Kenyan slums, or heck, even a voice-over track, The Constant Gardener supplies nothing in the way of a breather, and slowly suffocates."

#4. The immature, self-destructive, and utterly pathetic romance story

Arare mavelim quam sic amare. - Titus Maccius Plautus Mercator

(I'd rather plow a field than love like this.)

#5. The obnoxious, overused handheld camerawork

#6. The jarring, almost intentionally poor cinematography (Occasionally out of focus, often with characters drifting out of frame—presumably due to Meirelles' attempt at a certain kind of "documentary" realism—the cinematography can, at best, be described as messy. The (good) idea to achieve a sense of authenticity is there, but it quickly becomes eye-straining and ultimately backfires. Regardless, bad lighting is still bad lighting, and if you have both talent and the resources (with a production budget of $25.5 million) to make something better than The Constant Gardener, why wouldn't you? If I'm looking for flaws, let me see them clearly. Don't give me filler.)

A masterpiece?

No, just a mess.

Edit: Oh, and you quoted (besides the text) this picture ... you like it, don't you? :naughty:

Is there even any point in bringing red? Still, 😁 for Titus.

Naturally. But she’s got charm, I’ll give her that.

Yeah, she's... charming.

Rachel Weisz, I mean...