Word: strathairn
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...hope they'll get that somebody who is severely autistic really can achieve. Another thing I hope they get is the importance of the mentor teacher. I'm seeing a lot of smart, geeky kids and there's no Dr. Carlock [a high school science teacher played by David Strathairn] around to mentor them. Actually, my teacher was Mr. Carlock. I noticed they'd made that mistake in the script, but I decided he deserved an honorary doctorate so I didn't change it. He was just so important to my success. Now a lot of the science teachers...
...dispatching bad guys, fighting off six at a time in a stairwell, wrecking more autos than in a NASCAR blooper reel, Bourne speeds from London to Berlin to Tangier to New York City. Meanwhile his itinerary is monitored by CIA types - the pompous, desperate, George Tenet-y David Strathairn, and the more sympathetic, Hillaryesque Joan Allen - on world-scanning computer screens. They might be watching a video game. Certainly they're trying to play Bourne like one: Grand Theft Ego. He's a weapon they created, but to their chagrin he's in control of the trigger; he keeps going...
...Allen, Strathairn and the movie's other middle-age co-stars photograph about 20 years older than they did in their last films; Scott Glenn's face has the bas-relief road-map look of the aged W.H. Auden. That's partly to isolate the younger Damon generationally as well as geographically from his handlers, but mainly because Greengrass and cinematographer Oliver Wood are going for a verismo feel. The director, who last year did the excellent docudrama United 93, has defined his Bourne location work as guerrilla filmmaking - using concealed cameras in "wild" situations - and he overuses the hand...
...seedier sections of New York. On her frequent visits there, she orders blueberry pie - a dish no one else orders - and he falls a little in love with her loneliness. She leaves New York for Memphis, where she gets a couple of waitressing jobs and meets a cop (David Strathairn) who's sunk into alcoholism over the departure of his good-time wife Sue Lynne (Rachel Weisz). Elizabeth then goes to Nevada, cocktailing in a casino. There she encounters Leslie (Natalie Portman), a canny gambler who's got a sassy line of patter and is almost, but not quite...
...most of the stories spring to movie life. Jeremy's devotion to Elizabeth is more an idea than a felt emotion, though Law pours all his considerable charm into the effort. Strathairn and Weisz have some potent moments in a set piece of domestic regret, but each has to push harder than should be necessary to achieve the rueful feelings. It's not until Portman shows up that you'll find the sort of sizzle and sympathy Wong cooks up with ease in his best films...