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Review: “The Bourne Ultimatum”
By kyle | August 2, 2007
Kyle Smith review of “The Bourne Supremacy”
1 hour, 51 minutes/Rated PG-13 (action violence, profanity)
After the breathless, face-bashing, ulna-shattering, speed-limit ignoring, pharmaceutical-grade action high of the first two “Bourne” movies, making a third edition took on the air of the Bourne Inevitability. But would it turn out to be the Bourne Redundancy? Would its smoothly enmeshing gears get clogged up by the Bourne Viscosity? Or would the three films begin to run together, creating a wearying sense of the Bourne Multiplicity?
None of these. This two-hour chase-and-fight directed by Paul Greengrass–who made not only the second entry in the series but also last year’s best film, “United 93″– is another potent PowerBar of a movie, all protein and no fat. I sat transfixed and chuckling with joy as Greengrass let. Her. Rip.
The beginning overlaps a bit with the second film, “The Bourne Supremacy,” as it casually reminds us of the backstory about how amnesiac rogue CIA agent Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) foiled a plot to kill him by spooks at CIA HQ in Langley, Va. and left a pile of broken bodies in his wake. We start in Moscow but scurry into London, where a reporter (for, naturally, the lefty Bible The Guardian) has exposed both Bourne’s existence and the plot to kill him, having learned about all this from a mysterious source.
Bourne, having read the story, wants to meet the reporter to find more clues that might lead him to the plot to cancel him and refresh his memory about how he became a professional eliminationist in the first place. Meanwhile, back in D.C. and New York, senior CIA types again decree Bourne’s extinction, just to cover their tracks. While Damon sprints across Europe, you half expect that back in D.C. the bland desk man calmly giving the orders to terminate him be revealed to be….Matt Damon, in “The Good Shepherd,” in which he played a soulless WASP spy who would as soon invade the Bay of Pigs as play nine holes of golf.
Instead, Bourne’s primary foe, Noah Vosen, is played by David Strathairn, whose whittled honest voice makes him a devastatingly no-nonsense villain: he seems efficient, capable, a man born to lead people–if necessary, right off an ethical cliff. A friendlier desk officer (Joan Allen) has been involved with this Bourne caper long enough to know that Bourne isn’t a monster; merely a ruthless assassin. She wants to hear his side of the story. True, he has a damaging tape that could blow the cover of a sensitive program. But, she reasons, “if he really wanted to hurt us he could have sent the tape to CNN.” Worse, he could even have sent it to a news network that people actually watch.
Strathairn is forever urging and barking–”He’s on the move, gimmee eyeballs on the street, let’s go”–while his analyst Geek Squad storms their computers following Bourne around the world via surveillance cameras and intercepted phone signals. In chasing the British reporter, Strathairn commands, “I want his phones, his BlackBerry…I want to know what he’s gonna think before he does,” and half a second later, the thing is done.ÂÂ
A big pleasure is the fantasy that the CIA is a swooping, roaring, unstoppable force able to summon the darkest magic out of a clear blue sky–when they need an “asset,” or assassin, at Waterloo Station in London, he’s there instantly, in just the right place, perfectly hidden, with his trusty sniper gear. Back in gray reality, we all have about 50 years worth of reasons to suspect that the CIA is a place where bored nine-to-fivers in poly-blend shirts sit at crumb-covered desks silently calculating their pensions while saying, “Hey, anybody know a good locksmith? I just locked my keys in the Saturn again.” Kill Castro? Find Bin Laden? These guys couldn’t steam open an envelope.
The greatest of pleasures, though, is in watching Bourne work–you can see him observing, thinking, planning, reacting, as the CIA hellions swarm in from every direction. This guy could find great sushi in Idaho or a babysitter on New Year’s Eve. The script never cheats its way out by giving him a fancy gadget–buying a prepaid cellphone is one of the smartest things he does, but even I could probably manage that–and it doesn’t stop for jokey one-liners or cooing romance. Chasing the source who gave the reporter the story about him brings him to Madrid, where he again runs into the young Langleyite (Julia Stiles) who started to believe in him in the last movie, but shooting her a glance is as close as he gets to undressing her.
You know what I’m building up to, don’t you? Bourne isn’t just our James Bond. Much as I love 007–and last year’s “Casino Royale” was a tremendously satisfying entry-his films don’t stand up to the Bourne series’ brute velocity. As Greengrass thrusts his trademark shaky camera into his spies’ faces, stages gripping fistfights without music, hurls you across the rooftops of Tangier or demonstrates the art of crunchily driving a stolen police car backwards off the roof of the Port Authority, he always makes you feel the temperature, and it’s boiling hot. A whiff of Abu Ghraib and Gitmo makes the film feel current, but Greengrass doesn’t quite dump us back in reality by overselling the parallel.
There isn’t a syllable of excess dialogue–Damon seems to have about 10 lines in the whole movie–and Bourne’s real-time scheming makes you smile with its brilliance, if not its plausibility. I wasn’t quite buying it when a bomb exploded half an SUV length away and Jason bounded away without so much as a chapped lip, and when he finally comes back to New York with score-settling on his mind and is trapped in a building overflowing with adversaries, Greengrass simply glides over the escape plan and shows Bourne trotting out of the place.ÂÂ
Beneath it all, the story is pretty humble–”we have a situation!” is what we have in the dialogue dossier–but Greengrass makes everything crackle and buzz. This is Red Bull Cinema.  I can’t picture another director doing it any better. Spielberg would have added funny bits and maybe a cute kid; Scorsese might have dusted off “Gimmee Shelter” one more time and let his camera dance where Greengrass’s scrambles like a cat with a stick of dynamite tied to its tail. But maybe it was obvious last year that Greengrass has moved into the penthouse of top directors. His latest is the best pure actioner of the year. It left me feeling the Bourne Delirium.ÂÂ
Topics: Movies |
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:45 am
When you’re not reviewing for the Post, do you still get to to screenings?
Also, how do you remember so many lines verbatim from just watching the movie once. Do you have a hidden tape recorder?
Thanks.
August 2nd, 2007 at 10:29 am
Yeah, I try to go to the screenings of all the major titles, even if I’m not reviewing for The Post. (I skipped “No Reservations.”) I wouldn’t remember the lines if I didn’t take notes throughout the movie. Which makes it less fun than kicking back the way I used to. There are worse ways to earn a living.
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Is Paz–one of the film’s villains–a Hispanic hit man or a generic villain? Thanks Bernice
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I don’t think Paz is identified as Hispanic. I believe he plays a CIA hit man.
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:27 pm
kyle
thanks
no hispanic or arab terrorist–great!
August 2nd, 2007 at 8:00 pm
Yes, the portrayal of the CIA as some omnipotent entity is a stretch. But implying that it solely manned by desk jockeys is wrong.
The CIA has done a decent job of kidnapping and killing the top echelon of Al Qaeda. Those assignments were not carried out by desk jockeys.
Anyway, good review. Sounds like a good flick.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:09 am
“Soulless WASP”
Ha ha..that’s redundant.
August 3rd, 2007 at 10:51 am
It’s a shame that Greengrass is directing again. I absolutely hated the “shakey camera” in the second film… hopefully this one isn’t ruined by horrible directing as well.
August 3rd, 2007 at 8:40 pm
Great movie, although wanted to see a happier ending but good nonetheless. Yes The shakey camera was actually even worse in this one, I began suffering extreme nauses and sweating, and saw another man vomit in the parking lot after coming out of the theater. Hopefully the sea-sickness affect wont be as bad on DVD.
August 3rd, 2007 at 9:04 pm
As much as the shaky camera work can get annoying and might even cause nausea, it brings the viewer into a more realistic view of the events. Watch the third before you condemn the director, who in my opinion has done fantastically, and –as kyle said– was the only one who could have made the movie the way it was.
Kyle, from being a highschool student, how could I get a job like yours?
August 4th, 2007 at 12:39 am
Corey, start a film blog, if you haven’t already. Get linked in to as many other blogs as you can, and build a readership that way. In a few years, you won’t need to work for a newspaper to be a working film critic if you can get enough readers as a blogger.
As for the shaky camera, I’ve gotten used to it over the years. I remember when “Homicide” used to use it and I found it annoying but it’s become so prevalent over the last ten years that it no longer seems that unusual.
August 4th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
saw ultimatum this afternoon to escape the august heat avoided all reviews and trailers surprised to see so many positive reviews for this outing could smiles have something to do with not so subtle patriot act paranoia inducing editorial? don’t get me wrong, I never voted for bushco and support hollywood political actions but as a work of art standing on its own merits, I found this roller coaster lacking in originality, matt damon’s character as the terminator product rolled out for witless consumers eager for more atomic eye candy
August 5th, 2007 at 3:18 pm
[...] http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0440963/ Review: NY Post Torrent: [...]
August 5th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Jason Bourne’s memory problems are not so far from the truth. CIA scientists and Black Ops agents have investigated amnesia within the UFO subculture because memory loss of close encounters (so called missing time) is a real phenomenon. With a mass media in denial of the reality of UFOs, with scientists fearful of carrying out open investigations of the subject for loss of funding, and ordinary experiencers left to their own resources when confronting UFOs, such movies as the Bourne franchise allows us to identify with a hero whose memory has been destroyed but whose spirit and sense of justice is still strong.
August 6th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
I wished directors would stop using that shaky camera or quick cuts BS when showing action scenes. It’s incredibly annoying and prevents what people actually paid to see in an action movie. It’s not cool, it doesn’t bring you into the action, and it plain sucks. It maybe realistic but who the hell wants realism when you go to the movies. If I want shaky camera work and realism I’d stay home and watch Cops. Instead the action should be pulled back and if necessary slowed down to examine in all it’s glory. A prime example of how action scenes are done properly is 300 and the Matrix trilogy and pretty much any Hong Kong kung fu movies. I believe it takes a lot of training, time, and skills to pull off effectively which most actors don’t have but when done properly it becomes an instant classic scene in cinematography. Who doesn’t remember the fight scenes in the Bruce Lee movies or the fight scenes in the Matrix or 300? Shaky camera work is just plain lazy directing skills and basically ruins the entire scene. Might as well not even have the scene when it makes most people frustrated and cause resentment.
August 7th, 2007 at 12:37 am
I especially liked the fight scene between Desh and Bourne. That was so brutally awesome that The entire theater was cheering, “owing,” and shouting as the two fought and beat the living **** out of each other.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:54 am
So I hated the shaky camera bit as well. I hated it on the last film and found it more distracting on this film. I go to films to be a voyeur of another world not to necessarily become part of the action. In order for me to experince the world, I need to see it and I felt that I missed half of what was going on because the camera was shaking. Let me step back, enjoy the action be immersed in the story and enjoy the film. Please do not make it an amusement ride. The opposite extreme is a John Woo movie where every 3 minute action sequence becomes a 20 minute slow motion extravaganza. Also not good.
August 12th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
300? Matrix? those movies a really lame, no originallity seems to be in a video game!!!Bourne is close to the real as you get.. shaking camera…is the closest tha t you can get to the action, If you dont know how to watch a movies and want to see soap operas or plain cartoon dont go to the movies, but dont call stupidity good movies..Bourne secuele is great so the director innovating the scene.
August 15th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I think the shaky camera is used very effectively in these films. When I see Bourne beating some dude’s ass in a cramped apartment, it feels REAL. Anyone who has ever been in a fistfight will tell you that the angles and shooting methods used are as close to getting kicked in the head and thrown over a table as you can get in cinema. Great work!
August 16th, 2007 at 2:15 am
I agree with rondo. This movie seemed like a bad retread of the 2nd one (which I liked immensely). You had bad lines (This isn’t some newspaper story…this is REAL!), bad moves on Bourne’s part (Telling the bad guy he’s in his office when that wasn’t necessary or even helpful), pointless re-introduction of Julia Stiles (right, she just happened to get re-stationed there, and just happened to show up the night Bourne broke in!? And don’t get me started on the “oh, even though I never acted like it, we might’ve had some romance before you lost your memory), and redundant plot (Bourne wants to get back at who trained him…which he did in the 1st and 2nd movie).
August 16th, 2007 at 5:04 pm
saw the movie after review by kyle smith,completely agree with the review.
perfect action movie as good as it gets,absolute thriller after long time.
dont miss the action guys
August 17th, 2007 at 12:45 am
You write:
Bernice Says:
August 2nd, 2007 at 1:53 pm
Is Paz–one of the film’s villains–a Hispanic hit man or a generic villain? Thanks Bernice
kyle Says:
August 2nd, 2007 at 4:04 pm
I don’t think Paz is identified as Hispanic. I believe he plays a CIA hit man.
So, ah, are “CIA Hit Men” void of raciality? Oh the privilege and invisibility of whiteness. I bet you all don’t get that, do ya?
August 17th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Thanks for the detailed review. Now I’m more and more excited to see it even more!
August 20th, 2007 at 11:03 am
“Kill Castro? Find Bin Laden? These guys couldn’t steam open an envelope.”
–My dear brothers, never forget, when you hear the progress of enlightenment vaunted, that the devil’s best trick is to persuade you that he doesn’t exist!
–Baudelaire
December 12th, 2007 at 4:26 pm
Three years, three full years I have waited for this. The only other film I have waited with more desperation is Batman Begins and now The Dark Knight. The Bourne films have been my films, the exact kind of films I have loved growing up, the exact kind of films I’ll always hold dearest to my heart – my dad’s action films with sprouts full of smartness. And it is worth more than the wait. To expect to have a better time with your friends at the movies this year is almost expecting the unexpected; I can’t imagine any blockbuster coming any close.
Join the three films together and what they essentially are is a chase-game, an extended chase-game where the first moves are made by all-powerful CIA only to be hit back in the face by the one and only, Jason Bourne. He does make some moves of his own too, but essentially he reacts, and he reacts with breathtaking force with no one, absolutely no one – including the CIA, its assets, or we audiences – having any idea about how fast and how hard he will bring back the move (fight) back to the doorstep. To measure up to this challenge, and to entertain us over three films, sometimes leaving us clueless, not confused, what the next move will be, to be constantly intelligent, to be constantly thrilling is not what happens every year, forget everyday. The Bourne films are special films, much like the best entertainers there have ever been, for each and every character is embedded in our mind. These are chase films, and especially the last one which is just unrelenting in its pace, yet the characters leave an indelible impression.
Not a frame is wasted here; this is literally an action-packed explosion. As an action vehicle this is hands down the best film of the series; The Bourne Ultimatum with its methodical frenetic pace literally tells the audience – keep up or shut up, enjoy the build up and the wrap up. And yeah, don’t slouch but sit up – and delivers the goods like no film this year that has the word “action†in the genre category. The action set-pieces are probably one of the best ever conceptualized, the viewer is always guessing but is never lost. Some of the chase sequences are preposterous in that how the hell Bourne can survive, yet it is presented in a realistic way. The film isn’t realistic; it is trying to give the impression that it is possible. The rule for Bourne is simple, if he is aware of a malevolent variable in the equation he will survive. All he needs to know is the variable. The variables are always known, or at least we are given the impression that we know, for that is how we react with a big “awe†when the super-intelligent knows-it-all Jason Bourne makes a move, not blinking an eye, not flinching once. As Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles) says in The Bourne Supremacy, they don’t do random, there is always a purpose. There is a purpose why Jason Bourne takes off the clothes hanging on wires and covers his arms with them while he runs on rooftops, there is a reason why he buys a new mobile at Waterloo – they are all awe-inducing devices, giving the impression of supreme intelligence and a superlative presence of mind.
I wouldn’t want to give the plot away, not the least bit of it. Of course, there is no resemblance between Robert Ludlum’s novel and the film except for the title. One interesting thing: one of the main CIA assets in the film, Paz is played by Edgar Ramirez (Domino) and of course Jason Bourne’s rival in the novel is Carlos the Jackal, in real life Illich Ramirez. Coincidence probably. All that the story starts off right where Supremacy ends. Although an action picture, this film, unsurprisingly for the Bourne series has shown such remarkable intelligence and awareness, follows a plot that feels like an insider’s look of events we read only in the newspapers. A journalist is killed in a Moscow elevator and that is all we get to know. What happened behind? Probably, Jason Bourne. Of course, it isn’t Moscow that is under the gun but Central Intelligence Agency and an Operation called Blackbriar that, we learn, is an upgrade on Treadstone. The script, by Tony Gilroy who has penned all the previous Bourne films, is once again a straight winner. Other action films have the antagonists surprised by the hero’s smartness, here they expect it and yet he manages to stun them, and stun us. We know he is smart and he’ll come up something really intelligent and yet he outsmarts us, managing to give more than ten-films’ share of wow moments. The one-liners are smart and always belong to the film with so many smart characters. The one-liners aren’t just of the sake of it; they represent the smartness of the world of the Bourne films. No needless attempts at being funny are made; the film lets the situation do the trick. You know you have written a good story when people remember the characters, even the minor ones. Given a choice between the book and the film, I’ll choose the film for it not only has a better story but a greater degree of unpredictability.
And, at the heart of it all, as it always has been, is that wonderful actor Matt Damon. Jason Bourne is James Bond, John Rambo, all rolled into one, a guy who is frighteningly quick and smart and the films expect it, we expect it. He is a superhero under the disguise of human clothes, yet Damon manages to make that guy a real person. A person we care about, a person we feel with. To convey that, with the barest minimum of dialogues and not-so-expressive expressions is a feat in itself. This is minimalist acting at its very best, only a great actor can pull such a feat. He pulls off one-liners with consummate ease, and they don’t feel like them, they feel wholly natural. In the process he has created one of the great characters of modern cinema, a character as enigmatic as Harry Callahan. And it is not only him; each and every one of those high profile names – Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Albert Finney, Julia Stiles – just demonstrate what quality actors can bring to a genre picture.
All of them inhabit this wonderfully smart world; everyone is extremely intelligent and the protagonist wins the game not because he is the only one who is smart but because he is the smartest. Believe me, James Bond will find the going extremely tough here, rather he doesn’t stand a chance.
Paul Greengrass makes a motion picture as brilliant as United 93 and follows it up with this one. Looking at him at work in Supremacy and here, it felt like a newer version of Sergio Leone who was mastering his art, mastering his method on the course of two films. He is making an action film, yet as in United 93, we feel the action is a mere backdrop for all the power games being played between people. The action is just incidental, just the means; the real struggle is going along someplace else which hasn’t been revealed yet. It is tough to individually praise a film’s departments; they are all individually brilliant but even more important is the fact is that they gel brilliantly together. All of them complement each other so well.
There is a lot of hoopla about the jerky camera movement in this film, and yes it does shake a lot. Coupled with the edits, there are a hell of a lot of edits, the film feels frenetic. Yet there is a method to the frenzy, as was the case with Supremacy. It feels everything – every move that is thought, every line that is uttered, every decision that is made – is made under the gun, on the edge. It makes the people feel smarter. It is a chaotic world, yet these people struggle for their survival and they thrive. Those who fail to think quick, in those shrunken timelines, are out of the game within no time. And that is the rule of the game in the world of Bourne films, not long overdrawn timelines like that of the Dollar trilogy where the tension is created by everyone being given ample time. And yes, as Darwin postulated, it is always a struggle for the fittest to survive. The world does stop, sometimes, to contemplate the death – of unnamed soldiers like Desh, of seeming traitors like Neil and of heroes like Jason Bourne. And it runs again, laden with the history of past. Some people struggle with it, others forget about it. Extreme Ways it is. Is it the end? I don’t know. They did end like it started, in the water with the silhouette. The silhouette that is Jason Bourne, the silhouette that his breed is in this world.
I don’t think we have seen the complete Nicky Parsons, she feels too manipulative and cold. And I don’t think Hirsch was exactly enlightening Jason Bourne, he was just smooth-talking him. It must have been a tried and tested talk, whenever the asset is under stress feed him that. There are a hell of a lot of open threads and they have been left dangling. And yet, it feels so complete. Is it the best of the series? I can’t say firmly. The first film was a make-no-bones intelligent genre film, the second one was a genre film breaking its way into something higher and the third is in ways a film that chooses to go the genre way hinting only at the higher aspirations. I don’t know if it is a good thing or a bad thing but I have had the time of my life with these Bourne films, probably the best three-set films I have seen, along with the Dollar trilogy and the Mad Max films. And if it is indeed the ending, I couldn’t have hoped for a more befitting one. And yeah, just so I didn’t happen to mention, it is hands down the entertainer of the year.
February 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Way to shill for your corporate masters at News Corp. Did Rupert give you a Christmas bonus for this line?
” ‘if he really wanted to hurt us he could have sent the tape to CNN.’ Worse, he could even have sent it to a news network that people actually watch.”
February 19th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
@Steve
Your email address is AtlantaGuy 1979 and you’re calling me a shill? You sound like you’ve been working at CNN for 30 years.
Yes, by the way, I got a gigantic Christmas bonus, paid in gold bullion, which I store at my fortress of evil.