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AT THE MOVIES |
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Reviewer:
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Jim "JR" Rutkowski
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Directors:
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Paul Greengrass & Peter MacDonald |
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Writers:
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Screenplay by: Scott Burns, George J. Nolfi,
Tony Gilroy.. Based on the characters created by Robert Ludlum |
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Starring: |
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Matt Damon, Joan Allen, Julia Stiles |
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Rating:
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PG-13 for violence and intense sequences of action. |
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"Who says
blockbusters can’t be art?"
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 Arriving at the tail end of a disastrous
summer slate chock-full of bloated franchise flicks, The Bourne
Ultimatum can’t help but feel like an antidote to all the CGI poison
we’ve been injecting into our eyeballs since May.
This trim, efficient, preposterously entertaining popcorn picture
isn’t just a model of craftsmanship, it’s also a rousing rebuke to
the idiotically widespread notion that turning off your brain is a
requirement for enjoying an action movie. This is whip-smart genre
filmmaking with a seething political undercurrent keyed directly
into the here and now. Who says blockbusters can’t be art?
We first met Matt Damon’s amnesiac assassin in Doug Liman’s surprise
2002 hit The Bourne Identity. Rediscovering his almost superhuman
skill sets while on the run through Europe with Franka Potente’s
innocent Marie, the first Jason Bourne adventure put a nifty
postmillennial spin on Robert Ludlum’s Cold War spy series, complete
with a low-key romance that made this endlessly watchable diversion
feel like Before Sunrise for boys.
United 93 director Paul Greengrass took the reins with
2004’s The Bourne Supremacy, and it was only a few moments into the
picture that sweet Marie took a bullet in the head. That rare breed
of sequel that deepens and expands upon the original film, Supremacy
sent Damon on a darker, more isolated journey, face to face with the
killer inside him, attempting to atone for the sins of his past.
Greengrass is back for The Bourne Ultimatum, a large chunk of which
takes place in between Supremacy’s despairing Moscow climax and that
feel-good studio-mandated N.Y.C. epilogue that never felt quite
right. Having lost the one person he cared about, and still
tormented by memories of murder, Jason’s heading home to confront
the men who made him what he is.
Meanwhile things aren’t going very well in Langley. Joan Allen’s
savvy CIA operative Pamela Landy, who in the last picture found
herself shifting from Bourne’s adversary to his ally, has just been
sidelined by David Strathairn’s take-no-prisoners, starched-shirt
armchair warrior.
In case you haven’t been reading the papers, we’re in a whole new
era of national security, free from any pesky oversight. Turns out
the Treadstone Project that turned Jason Bourne into a Frankenstein
monster was just the tip of the iceberg, and a hapless Guardian
reporter (Paddy Considine) is dumping far too much classified
information into the headlines for folks like Strathairn to sleep
well at night.
The majority of The Bourne Ultimatum is a relentless cat-and-mouse
game, as Bourne follows a bread-crumb trail of clues across the
globe, pursued every step of the way by a seemingly inexhaustible
supply of “take-down teams” and “activated assets with standing kill
orders.” The thrill lies in watching Jason strategize and outwit his
would-be captors, improvising his way out of impossible situations
with a Boy Scout’s resourcefulness and those lightning-fast moves.
Shooting almost exclusively with handheld cameras, Greengrass keeps
us crunched in tighter and closer up than most directors might dare.
In Supremacy this technique occasionally tipped toward incoherence,
but this time he and cinematographer Oliver Wood have found a happy
medium, never sacrificing clarity for visceral impact. Stunt
coordinator and second-unit director Dan Bradley again finds
astounding ways to place the camera inside crashing cars at
breakneck speeds, culminating in a Manhattan traffic pile-up that
exceeds even the high standards set by the previous pictures.
The Bourne Ultimatum is as propulsive and nerve-jangling as any
action flick I’ve seen, breathlessly rocketing from one hair-raising
set piece to another, buttressed by elliptical, no-nonsense
character beats that speak volumes in brief silences. (At a lean,
mean 111 minutes, it’s something like a half-hour shorter than every
other summer event flick this year.)
But what I find most interesting is the moral severity Greengrass
has imposed on the series. The killings in these films hurt, and
carry with them a tremendous psychological cost. Damon, as always,
underplays the part brilliantly, with barely a page or two worth of
dialogue, conveying the character’s torment strictly through his
sleek physicality and haunted stare. The Bourne Ultimatum’s final
reel, with its stark allusions to hoodings and water boarding,
springs from a genuine place of outrage—at the patriotism of young
men being perverted and used for nefarious purposes by an
untrustworthy government. A disenchanted Allen surveys the agency’s
transgressions and sighs: “This isn’t what we signed on for.”
Looking back, it’s often through entertainment that we can see the
anxieties of an era peeking through the popcorn crowd-pleasers. The
Bourne Ultimatum isn’t just the best movie of this trilogy—it’s one
of the best films of the year. |
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THE BOURNE
ULTIMATUM ©
2007 Universal Pictures.
All Rights Reserved
Review © 2007 Alternate Reality, Inc. |
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RELATED REVIEWS...
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THE BOURNE IDENTITY |
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"…Liman speaks only when he
has something to say so at times he’s just keeps to himself until those moments
come” (JR) |
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JASON BOURNE |
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".The cast looks bored, the set-pieces are dull, and the script is
perfunctory-why did Bourne needed to return..." (JR) |
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