The Bourne Ultimatum Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)August 6th, 2007
The Bourne Ultimatum
reviewed by Samuel Osborn
Director: Paul Greengrass
Screenplay: Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, George Nolfi (based on the novel by Robert Ludlum)
Cast: Matt Damon, Joan Allen, David Strathairn
MPAA Classification: PG-13
The auditorium in which I screened The Bourne Ultimatum was filled to capacity and humming comfortably with the floating refreshment of air conditioning when I took my seat. By the film's end, the theatre was still full to capacity but the room's temperature had risen several uncomfortable degrees. The air conditioning was furiously rattling, expelling refrigerated air as efficiently as possible, but it couldn't keep up with the perspiration-inducing intensity that the film had caused our heart-rates to rise to. The film had indirectly made the room hotter. Talk about global warming.
Stoic, solemn, and robotic, Jason Bourne returns for his trilogy capper, The Bourne Ultimatum. Less of a continuation and more of an upgrade from The Bourne Supremacy, this third installment, working off of Robert Ludlum's source material again, invents new memories for the amnesiac hero to remember. What used to be Operation Treadstone has now been upgraded to Operation Blackbriar and Mr. Bourne was (of course) involved with it in some corner of his blurry past.
As Ultimatum picks up almost immediately after Supremacy left off, Jason Bourne is still on the run, hurdling cops like leapfrog and outrunning the CIA like they were a pack of blind, one-legged cats. Falling in beside the defensive, calculating Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) as the CIA's resident Bourne expert is Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Vosen heads up the Blackbriar gang and has hooked a reporter, Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), whose exposure stories on Bourne have uncovered confidential information. Because the information concerns Bourne's past and because it's a matter of national security, Ms. Landy, Mr. Vosen, and Mr. Bourne are all on his trail.
Director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, United 93) wastes zero time in mining the action from this storyline. As a filmmaker, his edit points are quick, his camera shaky, and his close-ups constant. He wants realism and he wants his action to appear in real-time. The pseudo-documentary style he's becoming known for is at its best here, muting the spectacle of his stunts to make room for believability in the play-pretend realism. And since it appears many of his stunts were actually coordinated on set-and not in front of a computer monitor-the realism is certainly accepted as, well, real.
For this reason, The Bourne Ultimatum sprints as a missile for the moon. It's fast and sometimes infuriatingly so, as it rounds plot corners at double-time, leaving us confused and choking on its dust. But all is forgiven when a clever foot-chase is launched, when Bourne kicks down the clutch of a motorcycle, as he hijacks an NYPD squad car, as he leaps from a roof, etc, etc. Luckily his stunts are as loud as they are intelligent. And since Bourne stays generally low-tech with his tricks, he becomes a sort of spy-version of MacGyver.
Though I'm not positive as to how essential this installment is to the Bourne legacy. CIA Director Ezra Kramer is discussing the Bourne subject with Ms. Landy early on in the story. Both are unsure of Bourne's importance to the agency, weighing out the possibility of giving up the search altogether. Landy mentions that maybe he's not involved with this particular quarrel at all; that this isn't Bourne's fight. Kramer shrugs, frowns, and says, "Well, let's keep looking." It seems even the fictional players are stretching their connection to Bourne to keep this story chugging. And it's true; the Bourne legacy doesn't require this story to be told. This becomes apparent when the same good joke from the second film is repeated twice more in the third; and also when the action set-pieces are nearly the same, if not extended to a more satisfying length. Like I said, this is more of an upgrade than a sequel.
But don't think I'm complaining. The intelligence of the screenplay is a damned marvel. To craft the delicate logic of such a complex CIA tale deserves a merit on its own. And so what if it's a formula their running through the Hollywood factory for another go-round? The last film was the best spy film in ages. Just imagine how good this upgraded version is. And technically The Bourne Ultimatum does have its own (very valid) storyline that jet-sets Jason from Morocco to Paris to London to Madrid and finally to good ole' Manhattan. And though what character building that's continued here may not be required viewing for any Bourne enthusiast, the power that David Strathairn most certainly is. Skeletal and sever, Strathairn's Noah Vosen is a formidable needle of a villain. He's human, as all CIA leaders claim to be, but that trait is buried beneath a permafrost mounted by his overwhelming coldness. Strathairn drives this storyline into a realm of quasi-originality, making The Bourne Ultimatum relevant enough for us to enjoy it unabashedly. Because of him we swallow again the tired conceit of Bourne's lost memory and his lingering guilt. We admit that, yeah, this truly is a magnificent flick.
Samuel Osborn
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