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“Nobody goes to a movie because Matt Damon‘s in it,” I argued with my life partner a short while back, who stubbornly insisted that exactly the opposite was true. This was only a day or so before Forbes.com announced that Damon was the most bankable star in Hollywood: $29 return per movie for every dollar he gets in base salary and perks. So what else do you think you know, smart guy?
Still it’s a kind of art—a presence in nonpresence, verging on giddy experiment—that in its own empty way seems pretty intriguing. I like the visual abstraction of The Bourne Ultimatum, aka Crank 2 with more sophisticated chops, and how Damon effectively disappears into it . . . not the role so much as the shape-shifting topography. Just another ambulating tourist in the perennial casbah of the mind—or maybe the new Chauncey Gardiner on anonymous undercover assignment. “Being there,” done that—hell yeah, guy’s zombie charged through it all!
