Review: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
Jason Bourne goes home this time, as the tagline for The Bourne Ultimatum promises. Does that mean that this new film differs in any significant way from what Jason Bourne did or found out in the prior installments of the series: The Bourne Identity or The Bourne Supremacy? The answer is, as you’re suspecting, a resolute no. And it doesn’t matter, because the Bourne films, while essentially remakes of one another, have grown more and more superb in execution: fast, breathless and aware of exactly what they are. The appeal of the series is very meat and potatoes and very no bullshit. These things don’t have a bunch of creatures and illusions of grandeur that stretch out over running times that Kurosawa would’ve found intimidating.
I rewatched the first two films earlier this week, and, while I remembered preferring Supremacy in the theatre, I found the first film appealingly small and cozy in the living room, with action scenes that are thrilling in their matter of fact approachability. The Bourne Supremacy is directed by Paul Greengrass (of United 93 and now Ultimatum) in an exceptional all media speed demon style, but it wears out its welcome a little before it ends, the technical virtuosity overpowering the already slim story.
The story is just as slim in Ultimatum (the big revelation is one of the big no shits of the year, essentially boiling down to a famous actor telling Bourne that he’s a super agent) but the story and the action aren’t at odds with one another this time around. There’s no story. action. story. action template here. The film is one large tapestry of pursuit, ass kicking and sometimes, when absolutely necessary, corny exposition.
There are three sequences in Ultimatum that I’m cofident will go down in the history books of action filmmaking. The first involves Bourne helping a too eager reporter (Paddy Considine, terrific, but I’m disappointed he wasn’t recruited to play an assassin, excuse me, an asset) elude various governemental surveillance that plays like the younger, more inventive, brother of a similar scene in Minority Report. The second and third are entertwined: the best chase of the series that morphs into the best hand to hand combat scene of the series.
The actors have improved all around, and they were already formidable. Matt Damon was a bit dull early in his career, but now, as he’s closer to forty than thirty, he’s beginning to look the part of a superhuman spook, the lines of his face lending a pathos the script doesn’t have time to provide. Damon is a remarkably unindulgent actor for his generation, he refuses to court the audiences’ sympathy (see the underrated The Good Shephard) and, resultingly, receives our sympathy anyway. David Strathairn, Joan Allen, and Scott Glenn, as govermental brass of varying moralities, do wonders with the typical jargon laced ops discussions that offer periodic breaks from the mayhem.
The Bourne Ultimatum is virtually plotless, has no real characters and tells you nothing you didn’t already know, but the film epitomizes what Roger Ebert has said in the past: what a film is about is unimportant, its how its about it that matters. The Bourne Ultimatum is a head rush, one of the most purely exciting movies in some time, a truly 21st century Hitchcock picture.
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