In Some Instances Death May Occur – Side Effects Trailer

UK Release Date: 15th March 2013

Stars: Steven Soderbergh (director), Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum, Jude Law, Catherine Zeta-Jones, David Costabile.

Plot: A woman turns to prescription medication as a way of handling her anxiety concerning her husband’s upcoming release from prison.

That synopsis doesn’t really do Side Effects any justice; from reading the plot outline Side Effects sounds like a film that could induce sleep by itself, but upon watching the trailer it becomes clear there is certainly more to it than meets the eye: a shadowy organisation creating drugs with hidden dangers, Jude Law’s murky past… “everyone knows everything” – there are bigger things happening here than just anxiety problems.

Directed by the man behind so many great films (Ocean’s Eleven, Che, Traffic, Contagion, Haywire, Magic Mike) Steven Soderbergh’s latest reunites him with one of the hottest names around at the minute: Channing Tatum. Combine that winning combination with Oscar nominated star of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Rooney Mara, and what you have here is a fine combination of talents. It will also be pleasing to hear the man who wrote the script, Scott Z. Burns, also wrote The Bourne Ultimatum. Between them, the cast and crew have knocked up some pretty huge hits!

So the trailer itself, how good is it? It’s good enough to make the audience ask questions and wonder what is going on, that’s for sure. However, it perhaps tries to hold a little too much back and I would have liked to have found out more about Side Effects. Saying that, it’s a good four or five months until release here in the UK and with a first trailer it’s okay to hold things back a little. I look forward to seeing more of this in the coming months.

The Bourne Legacy Review

Aaron Cross is the new hero of the Bourne franchise.

Ten years ago, in 2002, Jason Bourne discovered went looking for his Identity, in 2004 Bourne appeared once again to unleash his Supremacy and in 2007 he never actually delivered an Ultimatum but this was the title of the film nonetheless. Now, the year is 2012 and a new leading agent, Aaron Cross, is dealing with the aftermath of Bourne’s actions, the Legacy that has been left behind.

The Bourne Legacy was always going to be a difficult task. The original trilogy of Bourne films are critically acclaimed and even more loved by fans, it is one of the most successful and greatest trilogies of all time without a bad film in the franchise. Now, minus Matt Damon in the lead role and Paul Greengrass in the director’s chair the task becomes even harder. A good move by the studio was to hire Tony Gilroy to write the fourth film, which would turn into a sequel/reboot/paraquel, since he wrote the original trilogy as well. And what started out as simply writing the first draft turned into a full writing and directing job for Gilroy meaning that they had someone in control who could capture the essence of the original films and was already involved in the Bourne universe rather than bringing in a stranger.

It doesn’t get much cooler than this.

Legacy does a fantastic job of both establishing a new character, story and opening up the story as well as coupling these events with the actions that take place within The Bourne Ultimatum. The opening scene pretty much does this immediately with Aaron Cross (Jeremy Renner) beginning the film in the same way Jason Bourne left it: lying motionless in the water before suddenly moving into action. The occasional mention of Jason Bourne help to keep the film in the same universe without relying on it too much to continue the story.

Action scenes have always been vital in the Bourne franchise and these have been lauded by fans over and over again because they are perfectly choreographed and have a proper gritty sense of realism. There are worries at the beginning that this may not be the case with The Bourne Legacy as it takes a while for some big fight scenes to take place. Instead we have to settle for Aaron Cross finding his way through some mountains, shooting a few things with a rifle and bonding with some other random agent in a log cabin in the snow. There is a little taster of what’s to come when Cross takes on a wolf but then the action gets so much better when Cross tracks down and saves Dr. Marta Shearing (Rachel Weisz), killing four people in the process using everything from the ordinary (a gun) to the unexpected that Bourne is known for (a table, fire extinguisher). The stunts and fight scenes are just as good, if not better in my opinion, as the original trilogy’s.

Renner and Weisz prove a winning combination on screen.

The performances from everyone in the cast are very solid. Jeremy Renner, continuing his great year following Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol and The Avengers, is brilliant in the lead role and has fantastic chemistry with Rachel Weisz which really helps in the believability of their relationship towards one another as it builds through the film. Weisz herself is actually very good as well. Ed Norton doesn’t have much to do unfortunately but I anticipate a bigger role for him in the sequel which The Bourne Legacy certainly leaves itself open to and I wouldn’t be surprised if a script was already being written as I write this.

The Bourne Legacy does exactly what it needs to. It does a great job of exploring the world that we know Bourne lives in and gives insight to how his actions have affected people’s lives that were never given a second thought to before. With Matt Damon leaving this was a great direction to go. It doesn’t quite live up to the original trilogy but what it does is leave itself open for it’s own franchise to be headed by Jeremy Renner and hopefully Tony Gilroy will stay on writing duties even if he steps down from directing. Fans of the first three films should enjoy The Bourne Legacy but it is a hard place to jump in to what is already a pretty complicated series of films.

My Rating: 7/10.

Why is it so Difficult to Make a Good Sequel?

Arrested for making such a horrible sequel.

When audiences enjoy a film, sometimes they want more, they feel like the character’s journey is not complete. They want to see their favourite characters on the big screen more than once and fall in love with them all over again. Yet when they get their wishes there is always a section of the fans who lambast the producers and film makers for daring to make a sequel and, in some cases, for ruining the first movie as well. So why is it difficult to make a sequel work? Below are some of the reasons I have picked out.

Attempts to be too clever: Ocean’s Twelve is the epitome of awful sequels. The first, Ocean’s Eleven, was brilliant; it brought charm, wit, humour, style and smooth to the screen. It was everything Ocean’s Twelve wasn’t. Twelve tried to run a clever storyline with a twist at the end and it didn’t work at all. It just ended up being a horrible, boring film and the less said about it, the better.

Iron Man 2 tried to run too many storylines with too many new characters.

Trying to do too much: A lot of sequels fall into this category. The first film sets up the characters and completes a story and then, in order to make the sequel better, writers, producers and directors try to cram too much into the next film and it takes away the experience because the storyline runs too thin. This is the case with sequels such as Iron Man 2, in which a lot of work is needed to be done in order to tie in to The Avengers appropriately and so that storyline is thinned out as well as the other storyline involving Whiplash and audiences are left with a boring, lacklustre sequel to a film that promised so much.

No returning cast members: Sometimes, the big wigs at production companies decide that they can make a sequel work even without the stars of the first film. The classic case of this is Grease 2. Grease had charm, loveable characters and great humour and the two leads were perfect: John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. But the two decided they would not return for a sequel and it was made without them. In a sequel audiences want to see their favourite characters return to the screen, not be introduced to more random people.

Cashing in: It doesn’t take a genius to realise that a lot of sequels, if not all of them, are made to cash in on the commercial success of the original film. This leads to film makers taking good parts of the original film and making it more important in the sequel. An example of this is Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End; everyone loves Captain Jack Sparrow in the first film, but he plays in support to the main story of Will Turner and Elizabeth Swann and his appearances make the film comical.  In At World’s End, we are given too much Jack Sparrow to the point of huge annoyance.

The best of Bourne was saved for the third instalment.

The above are just a selection of some of the various reasons sequels do not work and a few examples of bad sequels. This is not to say that all sequels are bad. When done right they can add character development, build up great storylines and become some of the best films ever made. The Bourne Ultimatum, Spider-man 2, The Dark Knight and X2: X-men United are all examples of sequels getting it right.