Modern filmmakers have developed numerous innovations to bridge the distance between viewer and story. Larger screens, stronger speakers, digital projectors, and stadium seating have improved the quality of the movie-going experience, and no one who has seen flicks like Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan (1998) or War of the Worlds (2005) in a theater can question the important role now played by surround sound technologies like Dolby Digital and DTS. (Other experiments, like "smell-o-vision," or mid-90s button-filled panels which allowed audience member to shape the direction of the story have, obviously, found less traction with the public.)

More recently, directors have begun to use hyper-kinetic camera movements to replicate the sensation of being a part of the action. Some camera operators reproduce the perspective of a newsperson's camera crew at the site of a crisis, constantly turning, tilting, and zooming the camera to catch dynamic events as they unfold in three dimensions. Others of a still more daring sort actually run about with the camera, eschewing the kind of track that allows one to smoothly capture moving objects, and instead bouncing about in pursuit of characters dashing off at high speeds. The resulting footage, when manipulated by a new breed of editors willing to move among multiple shots in a matter of seconds, can create a dizzying effect--particularly if one has a weak stomach.

It does not, however, require the least susceptibility to motion sickness to find oneself growing nauseous while watching Paul Greengrass's The Bourne Ultimatum (2007). I can't remember ever experiencing a film that moved about this vertiginously. Incredibly, the film's editors manage to create a relatively linear visual narrative that keeps us in the loop as we follow a stealthy but blindingly fast action hero's movements through malls, squares, streets, and the interstices of decaying, tightly packed tenements.

The attentive viewer may never become totally disoriented, but I can imagine quite a few viewers becoming queasy to the point of sickness. A few glances at my wife during the film verified the near-permanent presence of a hand at her forehead, close enough to repeatedly shade her eyes during some of the more vomit-inspiring sequences.

Is this too much? Has Greengrass broken the toy entrusted to him by the film's backers? If a movie makes a large percentage of its viewers physically ill, can it still be considered a success?

It can if the film's contents warrant a visceral response, and I would posit that movies portraying so much violence have a moral responsibility to make the viewer shift uncomfortably.

While I admit to enjoying my share of Indiana Jones flicks--and am looking forward to next summer's fourth and final installment--I still vividly recall a moment of clarity when I caught myself laughing at Indiana's lucky slaughter of three German soldiers with one bullet and wondered how I could find such comic-book violence not just entertaining, but funny. Unfortunately, such epiphanies are rare: I usually respond as expected to such comic-book violence, with little apparent care for the reality hiding behind the representation.

Greengrass does not allow such easy distance from the action on screen. Every punch, kick, or kill is accompanied by physical discomfort in the audience, discomfort born of the film's effective mix of quick cuts and extremely kinetic camerawork. In this way, The Bourne Ultimatum trains its audience to associate negative physical sensations with the kind of violence we would prefer to contemplate only at a distance.

Sounds like just the kind of classical conditioning we should require of all leaders powerful enough to send men into great danger . . .