The Bourne Ultimatum 2007 Directed by: Paul Greengrass Cast: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine

Written by: Tony DeFrancisco August 6, 2007

“The Bourne Ultimatum”, is a bore-fest that makes you want to snore away.

Whenever I hear the name of Matt Damon for now on, I'll immediately think of his good roles; from his tiny little cameo from “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” to his marionette puppet in “Team America: World Police”. At the bottom of the list will be in words Jason Bourne, scribbled away in pink marker. “The Bourne Identity” welcomed me into a world of Bourne, in which no one could touch me. Then Greengrass came along and took over the second film, and made a better world for me to live in. He came back again, and showed us that the only thing this world has are two things – one being that the only thing the world uses to record with is a shakey cam, the other being Hitchcock’s grave being at the bottom of a mud-pit.

Last, when we saw Bourne, he had just cleared his name from killing two agents. Now, he is on the run again, by the same people from the last two movies, and different people. A journalist who has been following Bourne has found new information, information that the general public could not find out. And yeah, that journalist gets killed and yada-yada-yada. Do you really need to know the plot? No, it’s just Bourne finding out his identity again.

The film’s biggest problem is that it follows the same exact plot as the last two films, which should really be called a remake more than a sequel. The only thing that is new – a villain and we actually do get to know Bourne a tinsy bit better. Like most films, the third is never the best, and “The Bourne Ultimatum” only backs up that opinion or clarification even more. And who is it to blame on? Do we blame it on the stars, which are given the material and told to work with it? Or do we blame it on Academy Award nominated director Paul Greengrass, who just came back from making the greatest vision of 9/11 that our eyes have ever beheld us to see? Or do we blame it on the special effect artists, for not giving us one single explosion? Jeez, even “The Marine” is looking pretty damn good while we are talking about explosions.

No, this is the only movie that I can think of that we have no one to blame for. The reason for the two and a half stars is because these guys tried, and I give kudos to cast and crew where kudos are due, and this is one of them times that they tried, and they did not succeed. But they did one hell of a job trying to. We had several new-comers this time around, as well as some bigger roles for people who had smaller roles in their previous films. First off, Julia Stiles, highly underrated in my opinion, got a much bigger role this time around and will definitely be recognized here. Not only is to mention her acting talents, but, she hot.

Sorry, I got out of hand.

Anyway, we also have newcomers to the table such as David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, and Albert Finney, who all display such talent in this film. We also have Joan Allen returning, and she looks as good as she can act at this day and age.

So where is there a fault at? Why am I giving this two and a half out of four instead of giving it three out of four? First off, Matt Damon. In the first two films, he was badass. He told everyone that got in his way to get the hell out and they did without a fight. In this one, he told them to get out of the way and they stood there waiting for him to come after him. Is he losing his touch? Or am I just being touched in the wrong places? God, I sure hope it’s not the second one.

And another one of the faults of this film was the constant use of the shakey cam. Sure, in the second film, the shakey cam was new to us and we were mesmerized and we said “ahh” while we were wondering what the hell was going on during the shakey cam scenes. And then we saw “United 93” and we also said the same thing and we wondered what the hell is up with the terrorists shaking their heads the entire time like the film was in first person. And then, we see “The Bourne Ultimatum”, which has us shaking our heads and saying “ahh not another shakey cam film”, and wondering what is up with the camera guy. Hollywood, please do without the shakey cam. Sure, it was cool when the documentarians did it in “The Blair Witch Project”, and sure, it was cool when Danny Boyle kept adding it for an effect in “28 Days” and “Weeks Later”, but let’s give it up now. We are no longer caring for the shakey cam and the effects that it attempts to bring to us.

“The Bourne Ultimatum” is not as bad as it sounds like I am making it sound like. But whenever there was no action going on, I was terribly bored. The one highlight of the film though, I must say, is the car chase. Is it as great as the car chase in “The Bourne Supremacy”? Umm… hell yeah.

And that’s one hell of an accomplishment for a film that can’t seem to accomplish much

“If you were in your office right now we'd be having this conversation face-to-face.”

The Skinny:

The final chapter in the Bourne trilogy.  Hopefully.

The Review:

Every now and then I have this dream.  In it, I am my current age and I wake up and find myself in the halls of my high school (of which I am 13 years removed).  I continue to make my way through the hallways making my way towards my locker.  Everyone around me is how I remember them in high school and they don’t even notice that I am in my early thirties.  The only thing running through my mind is an increasing feeling of anxiety as I get closer to my locker because I can’t remember my combination.  For some reason I think that if I can’t figure it out or have to go to the principal’s office to get it, they’ll figure out how old I am and that I am not supposed to be there.  But every time I get to the locker, I get the combination right.  It doesn’t seem familiar to me as I am trying the lock, but I get it open first try - every time.  Weird, but true.  I have no clue what it means, if anything, but as I sat down to write this review that dream popped into my head and ended up being the best way to summarize how I felt watching the movie. 

The movie picks up right where the last one left off.  Literally.  After the car crash in Moscow at the end of Supremacy, we rejoin Bourne as he evades police then goes to Paris to tell Marie’s brother that she is dead.  During this time, he reads an article about himself in the Guardian Newspaper and heads to London to track down the writer, Rimon Ross, and find out who his source is.  He meets up with Ross at Waterloo station and learns of ‘Blackbriar’, formerly Treadstone (the top-secret CIA program that basically ‘created’ Jason Bourne).  During this meeting, Bourne gives a clinic on surveillance evasion by guiding Ross via cell phone through/around numerous cameras and CIA converging on the station.  He finds out the source, gets away from an asset (Blackbriar assassin) sent to kill him and Ross, and he’s off to Madrid to track down his source.  And so on and so forth.

This movie is essentially two hours of Bourne running.  Away from CIA trying to kill him and towards what he hopes are answers about his identity.  In the end, that is pretty much what the whole trilogy is about - Bourne trying to find out who he is and kicking everyone’s ass that gets in his way.  The action in this movie doesn’t disappoint.  There are two scenes in particular that stick out in my mind.  There is a car chase scene is pretty intense.  I haven’t seen many that look this seamless or exciting, even if it was a bit long and overdone.  I had the same complaint about the chase scenes in Supremacy.  How many shots do we need from inside the car where we see an incoming car smash into Bourne’s vehicle and watch his head shake back and forth?  Impressive the first few times I saw it, but overused.  Like that friend of yours that still quotes Old School - it was funny the first hundred times we heard it, but, we get it, let’s move on.  The real tour de force of the movie was the sequence in Tangier where Bourne is tracking Desh, an asset sent to kill his source, then him and Nicky (a CIA agent and former Treadstone contact who offers to help Bourne).  There is about a 10-15 minute stretch where there is virtually no dialogue; just straight action and a chase on foot.  We see Bourne hopping from building to building tracking Desh before he has a chance to kill Nicky with intermittent cuts back and forth between Bourne, Nicky, and Desh.  The climax of the sequence is the confrontation between Desh and Bourne that is hands down, the best fight sequence of the trilogy.  The most impressive part is, like I said, there is no dialogue at all and the suspense is basically created out of thin air through the editing and camera work.  It works on all levels and I wished there had been more direction like this in the movie.  I would recommend the movie solely on the integrity of this sequence alone.  Absolutely amazing filmmaking. 

I liked Identity, and loved Supremacy but Ultimatum, sadly, sort of let me down.  I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is a bad movie, by any stretch of the imagination. 
Supremacy was so far and above Identity that I guess I was spoiled into thinking this would be an improvement to the same degree.  Instead it felt more like The Bourne Supremacy, Part II.  There is a scene in the movie that is directly taken from the end of Supremacy (where Bourne is calling Landy and tells her to “Get some sleep.  You look tired”).  Wait, what?  Didn’t we already see that once?  If it was an attempt to be clever by tying the two films together, it didn’t work.  Clever for the sake of clever is weak, tired writing.  And if that last scene in Supremacy was supposed to prelude to Ultimatum, the jump into the middle of its sequel didn’t make any sense to me.  Again, clever for the sake of clever kind of feels like cheating.  The ultimate answer to the question of the series, ‘Who is Jason Bourne?’ was, well, sufficient, if not a little awkward and a bit forced.  I don’t know what ending I would have accepted more, but the solution presented didn’t work all that much for me, but it’ll do.

The Rub:

I really wanted to like this movie more - I really did.  By no means is it a bad movie; it just feels too much like we’ve been down this road before.  A tidy ‘end’ to a very good trilogy that I didn’t expect much from when it first started.  And there’s the rub.

1/2