Eep. By which I mean, I really expected this to be better not only a second time around but watched so closely after the first. I’ll grant that Paul Greengrass is a much better director than Doug Liman – while I’d describe Identity as slick, I’d say this is more frenetic and the better for it – but this movie is about 100% less interesting than the first, by which I mean my attention began to drift almost before Franke Potente’s death.

Maybe I’ll eat my words when I watch Ultimatum later, but I have to say right now, what bugs me about these movies so far is, they seem all too pleased and reliant on their technical brilliance. Sure, this one delves into the emotions a little with the Potente death, but otherwise it feels like almost exactly the same story, if it can even be called that, basically a chase, and I can’t help but wonder if these two movies, the whole trilogy in fact (basically I’ve heard the third described as, “a chase! but a great one at that!”), couldn’t have been covered in just one, better, movie.

Honestly, I really wanted to love these movies this week – I wanted to see the wonderousness other people find in them – but, what can I say, I just don’t. People regularly post comments on the IMDb to the effect of, “Yeh! This is what Bond should be like!” etc … even in some cases condemning the major step-up Casino Royale as being a lesser spy thriller. Well, pre-Brosnan, I have never been much of a Bond fan … but I would honestly take even a Connery or Moore Bond movie over these again … even as much as those early Bonds blur together as one in my memory, they were at least more distinct and memorable than these, however slick or frenetic these get. There is really more to making a movie than these movies contain … at least I frickin’ hope there is.

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