Mitigating my shaky-cam hatred

I've discussed this with a friend and I didn't really make it known that shaky-cam has a place. For example Gladiator and Saving Private Ryan, despite how I made it sound, were good uses of shaky cam.

It also may have started more with Heat, which I don't remember really but Michael Mann has always done the handheld Soderbergh thing, so that's not so hard to believe.

The problem is that, as I mentioned, it's become Zeitgeist. It's hip, so people use it in bad places.

Bad places like in a climactic fight between two trained killers. These men know what they're doing. I want to see them pick each other apart piece by piece. I don't want to hear an "oooof" and wonder if Damon just broke homeboy's knee or poked his eye out.

A carefully choreographed fight scene is wasted on shaky-cam antics. Granted the Bourne fight scene isn't meant to be Kill Bill vol 3, as it employs the same 'imperfection' that makes the rest of the movie so good. It's a gritty scene. Spit flies, eyes bug out. It's down and dirty. So maybe a little shaky is good. But when 15 seconds of a scene is devoted to Damon's spasmodically lurching right thigh I say, "Meh"--regardless of how sexy that thigh may be. When even running down the street gets the shaky treatment I start to get annoyed.

It should be a tool to exploit, not a gimmick upon which to build 120 minutes of film.