Sweet Spot Hey Number Five (with Spoilers!)

After the Hurt Locker rocked my world, I became an instant Jeremy Renner fan. When The Bourne Legacy came out, memories of the traffic in Marikina when they were shooting here reminded me to find time and watch it. But, of course, as was the way with life, unless I get invited to stuff I don't really go out and do it (really should work on that), so this afternoon, when we had the whole day to ourselves, me and my girl friends decided to go.

The few people I know who've watched it didn't really have anything mind-blowing to say about the movie. I think the common sentiment was a certain chunk of the movie ***SPOILERS*** was just too darn long relative to its importance in story development (i.e. the motorcycle chase). With my expectations sufficiently lowered, I found myself picking out gems almost unconsciously. It's human nature, Sherlock in BBC Sherlock said, "They love to contradict you."

My favorite parts:

• The establishment of sexual tension that did not have to descend into passionate love-making (these two dudes had no choice but to be together, so any attraction that eventually developed was surely organic)
• All the man vs. wild scenes (and the close-ups of the snarling wolf, where he literally man-handled an animal to make it swallow the capsule thing): it actually reminded me of his focus and single-mindedness in the Hurt Locker (and why men are sexy, in general)
• The amazing action scenes: fast-paced, frenetic, bordering on the impossible (squeezing in speeding motorcycles throughout Manila traffic can get pretty intense)
• That extremely painful confession (at least it seemed painful to me) that Aaron used to be a guy with below-average intelligence and that this was why he needed to stay enhanced
• Shearing's passion for "the science" was so palpable I wanted to hug her when Aaron was grilling her about the chems
• There were some surprises for me: the suicide and when the agents turned on Shearing
• Aaron's kickass killer instincts (when he prepped the gun to shoot down a plane I was all that's my kind of dude yeah, and when Aaron told Shearing to shoot at a certain direction after x minutes)

You'd hear the nasties in other blogs/reviews, go right ahead and look for them, but perhaps because I was in a certain light mood today I couldn't fault the movie for trying to be big.

By the way, when we were watching at SM Masinag, Cinema 4 I think during the 3:40PM show, some irresponsible parents brought kids to the movie. I cannot even begin to understand why parents would consider bringing a toddler (or a big baby) to a movie theater, and to this kind of movie! Gahd. I let out several explosive shhhses which didn't really accomplish anything but something or another happened (they injected a sedative?) and the kid piped down. Parents, please grow up. Learn how to control your kids or one day, they will meet me, and I will scar them for life. I swear it. I've been known to terrorize kids during Halloween.