What, you mean like she’ll charge him for a good time?
I watched The Bourne Identity the other night and it occurred to me: Jason’s base of operations, before his memory loss, was Paris; Nicky was the assignment officer (or whatever her title might have been) at the Paris safe house.
Might their relationship have occurred after Bourne’s training, while he was stationed in Paris?
That’s what I was thinking also.
Although it was obviously shoehorned in, she was clearly implying that they’d had a romantic relationship. (“You really don’t remember?”) Since Bourne was based in Paris, as was Nicky, this isn’t terribly improbable, though it clearly wasn’t part of the storyline from the first or second film. The whole thing seemed like a subplot that just got dropped (and Stiles just seemed useless and embarassed to be there); it was totally pointless, but clearly there.
Stranger
Saw the movie last week, and along with all the other comments I wanted to point out one aspect that I thought was really well done. When Bourne is chasing the guy in the London Subway, it was interesting to see the reversal of roles. Usually Jason was the one that would cooly walk from one place to another easily dodging the frantic attempts at those chasing him to get him. This time Bourne was on the recieving end of that sort of “smooth operator” treatment and was frazzled during the chase while the other guy was calm, cool, and collected.
Did anyone else catch in the preview for the movie where they played Bourne (spliced together, I figured out later) saying, “I remember now. I remember everything.” Very misleading, since I don’t think we get the impression even at the end of the film that he’s recovered all of his memory. Anyone else have opinions on this?
I agree with you. I thought from the preview that we’d get this big revelation about his past, but it seems that he still only gets his memory jogged by specific situations that already relate to his past, when he’s reminded by something he’s seeing now.
Ya, could be, but that thought whizzed right on through my brain and a darker, deeper thought settled there instead. Maybe I just [del]wish[/del] think there is more to Nikki than just a phone operator.
I, too, thought she was implying having a hand in Bourne’s “transformation,” so it’s not that unreasonable.
I like that better than “lets set up a romantic relationship for the possible sequel”. How can we make it work?
Part of Nikki’s main responsibilities was monitoring the mental health of the Treadstone agents. They got headaches, were sensitive to light and had OCD problems. It doesn’t really make sense to give the responsibility of the mental health of several $30million weapons to someone whose main training is to staff the safe house. She was part of the ongoing behavior modification for Bourne, definably, maybe for all of them. I think this can also imply she was part of the initial behavior modification too.
My read was that it was this kind of thing that was painful for Nikki, because she liked Bourne. It’s implied, by his treatment of Marie, he’s a decent guy when he’s not working. He ignores her totally when he breaks into the safe house, not even tying her up or rendering her unconscious. So she assumes he knows she is no threat to him, she may have thought he remembers something of their relationship – that maybe he knows she was conditioned not to harm the agents. I’m reaching with that, however it’s how I made sense of Bourne leaving a potential threat unattended – he subconsciously knows she won’t try to harm him.
In the second film she is upset that that they are trying to kill Bourne (“this is about killing Bourne”). She is terrified of him when he interrogates her after taking her off the tram. However, all he does is yell at her and knock her into a wall. She knows she got off very lightly there. However, she still believes he came back, not for revenge, not for an assignment, but for profit.
So six weeks later, in the third film, she has found out that Bourne didn’t kill Danny and was framed for both killing the agents as well as stealing the info & money. He’s been living blamelessly in India since he dropped off the grid. She knows some of the things she help do to him to turn him into Jason Bourne, and now feels she must atone for helping do that to him. This is why she doesn’t just hand him her car keys and laptop, tell him where Daniels is, and hide under the desk until the relief team shows up. She could have easily explained the security challenge with Bourne knew the response and was holding a gun on her.
Just watched the 1st one yesterday. First time you see Nikki, is when the photos of Bourne and the chick come up on her computer, and she manipulates the photos into a “wanted poster.” She displays absolutely no recognition of Bourne at that time, or any other reaction that would suggest a prior relationship.
I had a few laugh-out-loud moments during the movie, at their terrible security. Reading classified documents in an office with windows was one. There’s apparently no authentication required when an assasin kills his targets, or Bourne would never have been able to fake their deaths in Morocco. But my favorite bit: apparently no one involved in the film knows how fax machines work. At the end, when the blonde CIA woman faxes out proof, there’s a standoff right as the last page is going through. Most fax machines first scan documents, then dial and transmit. In this case, you can hear the machine dialing while she’s facing him down. A few bullets into the fax machine and it’s all over.
The period of time between scriptwriting team writing script one and scriptwriting team writing script three is an eon worth of revisionist plotline. Plus five years worth of Julia Stiles becoming a bigger name actress.
He didn’t successfully conceal their survival. After Nicky coded in for the assassin, Vosen demanded a “sub rosa” investigation to confirm their deaths, and later found out that they’d survived.
Yeah, but it’s been the same head screenwriter (Tony Gilroy) for all three films. Stiles was also relatively well known before the first film (several teen market films including a pair of Shakespeare adaptations), and indeed, her role in The Bourne Identity seemed like a cameo, since it could have been played by anyone. It’s clear, however, that they never had any grand scheme for the films as an overarching story arc; like a certain other trilogy that we’ll not name, later elements were somewhat clunkily wedged in later, despite the fact that they don’t really make sense upon review. (At least Marie didn’t end up being Bourne’s sister.)
The whole abortive subplot never really goes anywhere, though. (If) Nicky was sleeping with him; so what? He cuts her loose, tells her to go hide. There’s no impact, and indeed no influence on the story; it’s a meaningless aside. This screenplay was just a sloppy, predictable rehash of the first two films…again, like a certain unnamed trilogy. It’s too bad, because the first two films were pretty good.
Stranger
As others have already noted, I found the shaky-cam nausea-inducing. And it wasn’t the action scenes that did it to me, it was during the conversation scenes where the camera was looking over someone’s shoulder…it wasn’t still for a second. I had to watch from the corner of my eye or look away multiple times in order to make it through the entire film.
That said, I would still give it a thumbs up. As a non-stop action flick, I liked it better than Live Free or Die Hard. Maybe I need to see the next installment on a smaller screen.
I just watched this movie today. Having been very satisfied with the second movie, despite feeling cheated by the camera work, I did not even notice it in this film. Never once was I ever forced out of my viewing fantasy to think about camera work, or how shaky the cam was. I remember being very disappointed in the camera work in the second movie and felt it was very subdued in this one. I had no problems following the fight scenes or the chases, whereas I did in the second movie.
Its pretty much the whole “later elements are clunkily wedged in” If I were a betting girl, I’d say that in a future film we will get clarification of a Bourne/Nikki past and probably a Bourne/Nikki future. Not that its been set up consistantly through the plot, or even because it adds to the storyline, but because hot steamy Matt Damon sex scenes will sell (its possible hot steamy Julia Stiles sex scenes will sell too)
Anyone else get the feeling that shaky camera and quick edits have as much to do with “we don’t want to have to have GREAT stuntmen and spend TONS on fight staging - shakey cameras make it much easier to do sloppy stunt work” as an artistic choice. I always think they are a cop out for a good fight scene.