For some odd reason – totally unconnected with the HSA reunion, I’m sure (HA!) – I’ve had several conversations lately about Jane Austen and peoples’ like or dislike of the genre with which she is associated. There seem to be only two points of view: love it or hate it.
To a lesser extent, I have seen the same attitudes toward the Jason Bourne series of movies. He’s either boring and too violent, or the best thing since Chuck Norris.
I have a solution that should make everyone happy. What I would really like to see is Austen Meets Bourne.
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The movie opens with a panorama of the lush English countryside. We see an elegant estate with many windows overlooking a large, peaceful lake. We see two men in tall hats riding on horseback. They stop at the edge of the lake. They stare. They dismount and pull an unconscious man out of the water. He is wearing a regency-era black wetsuit.
The man wakes up, and doesn’t know who he is. Doesn’t know where he is. Doesn’t know what he was doing. But he sees a beautiful young lady cutting flowers in a nearby garden and she sees him. One of them instantly falls in love with the other.
Later, they’re at a ball and in the middle of a country dance in which they carry on a long and intense conversation. Assassins sent by a rival love interest crash in through the windows. Bullets fly. Explosions rock the building. Our hero takes out every assassin single-handed.
We cut to some sisters writing each other letters about the incident and sealing them with wax. Music plays as we hear the contents of the letters read in voice-over.
Just before the end our hero and heroine marry. They are kissing in slow motion in a horse-drawn carriage… seen through a sniper scope.
A mysterious cell phone rings in our hero’s pocket, and he answers. A low, menacing voice says “time’s up.”
We hear a shot, but our hero somehow avoids injury by jumping back into the lake and pretending to be dead.
Our heroine faints and people run frantically for smelling salts.
Cut to black.
