THE ULTIMATUM

Crunch....
Munch....
Dig deep....
Slurp....

Cruuunch again....
Slurrrp again....
Top it with a noisy burp....
Hello, Hello....

Yes, yes, kiss coming up.....
Close, very close....

You know that connection....
It happened in Goa....
He's going....

I tell ya when ya flip the page that's what happens next....

Yak, yak, yakkity yak....

Oh well.....
welcome to the movies, where scenes like these are all too common, the Simpson warning notwithstanding. Can you really blame the DVDs?

Agreed part of the joy of being at the movies lies in crunching the corn, spinning the yarn, revealing some endings, but must we choose to unlock our jaws with such ease?


It won't be that annoying if it were one of the ha, ha, hee, hee kinda movies. Here we are at the sneak preview of the Bourne Ultimatum and the guy behind us is armed with his copy of the Ludlum saga. The extent of showing off, the copy in hand, the desperate flipping of pages proof he doesn't quite know his book yet.

He tells his pals what happens in this part, then the next. I'm reminded of reviews that give the ending away, that tear hair over the text, sub-text and everything else in between.

You reach a point when you want to scream shhh quiet. Quiet it is, when our neighbour reaches that threshold of pain - of knowing the story before its even begun - and tells the guys behind us to discuss it later. To add mirch to the masala, he reminds them that the novel is only loosely based on the Ludlum novel.

It works, the shhh quietens down the noisy three-some as it does a couple of noisy munchers.

Then we settle down to enjoy what we really should - The Bourne Ultimatum.


Matt Damon is back as assassin Jason Bourne.

He's intelligent, he's smart, he addresses our worst fears and shows us his brains at work in the raging battle of the bullets. It could easily have been a bang, bang movie shot in various locales - some exotic, others not quite. It effortlessly lifts itself above all of that leaping into the realms of an intelligent thriller.

Having contributed a wee bit, to the Ultimatum's ringing revenues of US $33.6 million in the second weekend, I can safely say the ones who made for its record-breaking opening weren't wrong. For the record, that was a swell US$69.3 million.

I loved it and I'm sure you will too - the corn, chips n slurpees notwithstanding.

PS: And to see how Desh, the hitman is transformed in a Dash, look no further than TIME.