jencat | trash and grand finales

So, tonight makes me ask the obvious question: Jason Statham vs Dan Craig vs, er, Matt Damon

Honestly, Transporter 3 was about a billion times more fun than Quantum of Solace. It didn't want to be Bourne part VIII, and it was directed by someone who actually let you see what was going on, rather than piling on zooms and jump cuts just because everyone else is (it was interesting in Bourne Identity; everything after that got very old very quickly). Shocking, I know.

Oh, I know the Transporter flicks are trash. But they're bloody well done trash, and more to the point, they're fun. Casino Royale was fun, and so was the first Bourne - before they got all wrapped up in their own po-faced self-importance in the sequels. I can't think of a single sequence in Quantum, Supremacy or Ultimatum that I really remember or want to sit through again - each to their own, of course, but I was bored silly by the complete lack of character or meaningful plot.

The worse bit - being that I've seen Identity more times than I should - is that they are, ultimately, pointless. The big twist at the end of Ultimatum was supposed to be that, shock, horror, Bourne had volunteered for the whole Ebil Super Soldier program all along. Of course, this shouldn't really be a twist to anyone who, er, saw the first film. It's never suggested at any point that he (or Clive Owen, etc) didn't volunteer for it. They weren't kidnapped and forced to - the only thing that changes is the amnesia, and that the crisis of conscience makes Bourne dangerous to his employers.

And the forced retroconning bugs the hell out of me - it takes away the wonderfully Doug Liman ending of Identity and tries to rewrite what it all meant. And it really doesn't mean all that much - two flicks full of jump cuts with no heart at all (lordy the whole thing with Nicki is just awful - if she knew him in the past, she showed absolutely no sign of it in the first film at all..)

Anyhoo, Transporter3 was pretty much reliably entertaining - you can't go that far wrong with The Stath, after all. The boy keeps a straight face through hell or high water, or, indeed, driving a car into a train. From the roof of another bit of the train.. The fight scenes were great (let's strip during a fight and see how many items of clothing can be used as weapons! In a garage!) and the script was suitably bonkers (yay Luc Besson!) to the point where I spent most of it cracking up every few minutes. Even the nutty Ukrainian love interest was quite amusing (oh, and I wanted her hair. Which I'm 90% sure was actually a wig.). More than anything, it was inventive - Jase can't go more than 50 feet from his pretty shiny Audi, or he'll go boom. Which is a bugger when he drives off a bridge into a nice cold deep Ukrainian lake... that scene was classic. And they had T Bag from Prison Break as the baddy, with 50% less psycho hillbilly accent!

So: fun. And then I even got home in time to squee through most of the last ep of The Devil's Whore... Guess the curse of Angelica's husbands struck again then! Although, gah, I guess it was as hopeful an ending through all the doom and gloom as we were going to get. Nope, Sexby was never going to walk off into the sunset - none of the boys in this did. Honest John, Cromwell, Sexby - the main male cast got basically culled in this ep, and Bess and Angelica survived it all with their children. Of course Angelica called her daughter Beth, and of course it was her daughter that survived after she lost Thomas's son... the loops of themes and symbols running through this ran right down to the end.

And it was great stuff: Angelica finally realising there's someone left who has never betrayed her, and never would. But you can't change who you are... And before that, the great bit where Sexby actually did what I was cheering him on to do, and split Joloffe's nose open "like a fig", to quote the bloke himself. That was fun. And of course he tells her straight out he's been in love with her since her first wedding day all those years ago. Almost as good as Ange herself bringing the highwayman garb out of retirement to go assassinate Joloffe in the bath. Very professional, considering (had she been taking lessons from the assassin extraordinaire she married, you have to wonder...). All leading up to the scene after the funeral in the hall at Fanshawe House, all full of ghosts and shadows, and both of them dressed in drag. Weirdly appropriate, after all the power plays, and then the sucker punch - Sexby can have what he wanted, all along, but he can't keep it because he is who he is. Because he has to at least try to kill Cromwell, and there will never be another way out of it.. Gah.

And the scene on the beach, where she hears the church bells and realises it's over.. that she's widowed yet again by the war. It was a more fitting end for this version of Sexby than what really happened (I'm guessing that was more like what happened to John) but lordy, so sad. Almost avoidable, but not quite.