Bourne Ultimatum

[cinemabon]

The Bourne Ultimatum – directed by Paul Greengrass

The reason for Pierce Brosnan being ousted by Daniel Craig is that Matt Damon as Jason Bourne changed the image of the secret agent. Whether Matt Damon stars in “The Greatest Story Ever Told” or “The Simplest!” he will forever be known to this film enthusiast as, Jason Bourne, the actor that changed the modern image of spies.

Like a ghost, Bourne pops up here and there. However, unlike Bond, Jason can be hurt, and Jason can bleed. In this third (Oh, my god! Not another third movie this year!) installment, Bourne goes back to his roots, and in doing so reveals another side to his multifaceted character. If you haven’t watched “The Bourne Identity” or “The Bourne Supremacy” then its high time you did… before you see the third film. The reasons are obvious when the flashbacks, only partial ones, start happening, as well as certain references. The Bourne enthusiasts, and I count myself as one, this is redundant and let’s get on with the action.

Bourne magically pops in and out of European countries as quickly as CIA operatives conveniently appear on rooftops during a chase scene. That aside, if you like spies and intrigue, then this movie is just for you. What’s it about? Nothing, really. I’ve already mentioned that Bourne is seeking his identity… well, he did that in the last two films! The thing about a ‘Bourne’ movie is not that Bourne will actually find out who he is (he does… sort of) but that everyone thinks he is after them. So they send in the clowns. The chase scene in Morocco went on a heartbeat too long for me. But as my son said, “We didn’t come to watch them throw flowers at each other, dad.”

Film three sort of wraps up the whole package into one neat trilogy that fits, making it the perfect DVD Christmas gift (I’m sure). Some of the characters and actors from the two previous films managed to make it into this third one, such as Nicky (Julia Stiles), a seemingly trivial character until she asks Bourne, “You really don’t remember, do you?” We, the audience, got it if Bourne did not. She was really saying, “You really don’t remember making love to me?” Bourne manages to foil the CIA one more time in his flight to fancy, as this film weaves plots within plots. Unfortunately for Scott Glen, he has two scenes and six lines that don’t amount to a hill of beans, plus he looks terrible.

I love Matt Damon in this movie, so this really is not much of a critical review. I hope he does a Bourne four, five and six.

[oscar jubis]

I wouldn't call myself a fan of action movies but I could turn into one if the genre produced films this well-made. Of course, the plot is pure formula. But I didn't mind this time and I credit Mr. Paul Greengrass. His Bloody Sunday (2002) evidenced an uncanny ability to control chaos and mayhem. Here, he manages to make a furiously fast picture that's consistently exciting and coherent. It's not easy to keep the viewer spatially oriented when the action moves so rapidly and jumps from one locale to another at vertiginous pace. The Bourne Ultimatum has more cuts-per-minute than anything I remember and plenty of handheld camera work but, somehow, it feels disciplined and harmonious.

[cinemabon]

Matt Damon on John Stewart Thursday night:

"I read the only negative review online that said, 'Paul Greengrass needs to invest in a steadycam'"

[oscar jubis]

I wonder who's the knucklehead who wrote that?

[mouton]

THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM
Written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi
Directed by Paul Greengrass

Agent: Uh, sir, he drove off the roof.
Noah Vosen: What?
Agent: He drove off the roof.

Central Intelligence agent, Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), has found herself once again in a tiny room, surrounded by a team of people, all scrambling to track the notoriously elusive, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). At this stage, bringing Bourne in is not just her job but an obsession, one that has gone far past the point of hunt and capture and developed into a need to understand the man himself. In Paul Greengrass’s THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM, we are right there with her every step of the way. Only it’s a much more enjoyable experience for us than for poor Pam. We have the added advantage of being able to see both sides of this chase from where we sit. From this vantage point, we see the C.I.A. constantly miscalculating Bourne’s next move and, in what is perhaps their biggest misconception, mistaking Bourne for some sort of super human, incapable of infallibility. Jason Bourne is just a man. Yes, he’s an incredible specimen with quick reflexes, heightened intuition and kick-ass moves but he too is just trying to figure out the mystery of where he came from and who he is. How can the C.I.A. pretend to know Bourne when Bourne does not even know himself? The Bourne paradox is what makes Jason Bourne one of film’s most intriguing action heroes and THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is a perfect answer to years of unanswered questions.

To recap, we first caught a glimpse of Jason Bourne in THE BOURNE IDENTITY (directed by Doug Liman). He had no idea who he was and it was exhilarating to watch him awaken to his special brand of fighting style, while still infuriating to watch his struggle to understand how he came to be so skilled. THE BOURNE SUPREMACY followed with a new director (Greengrass) and a depressing change in tone after the death of his girlfriend, Marie (Franka Potente), at the film’s onset. The film could not help but be a more sobering experience after that. THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM changes Bourne’s direction from less running away to more running towards. Tying all three films together is the constantly improving performance by Damon as Bourne. Damon brings a sleek brand of class to his characters in most of his films and he treats Bourne with a stealth speed and fiercely internalized stoicism. You might say he was born to play Bourne. His tormented mind has gone from wonder and awe in the unraveling of his rediscovered personality to a dark brooding. He has understood that getting close to others gets them killed and has cut himself off as much as possible to both avoid future tragedy and maintain his focus on the goal.

Another man who found a stronger focus this time around is director, Greengrass. His direction for SUPREMACY was at times difficult to follow. Not only was the story not told as succinctly as in Liman’s IDENTITY but Greengrass’s now signature extreme-shaky aesthetic and jump-cut obsession made it visually jarring as well. After snagging an Oscar nomination for his direction of UNITED 93 last year, he has learned a stronger command of his unsteady film approach. The result is a visually more engaging experience that ushers in a different kind of American cinema. The British director follows the action through numerous international locations, from running across rooftops and hopping through windows in Tangiers to zipping in and out of the crowds in a busy London bus station. The world flavour only further serves to highlight the film’s direct criticism of American home security practices post September 11th. Greengrass’s portrayal of the C.I.A. is one hyped up on power and the authority to kill anyone whenever necessary and that power reeks of paranoia. Making the C.I.A. the enemy makes our hero’s actions, choosing to spare life whenever possible, all that much more commendable. American cinema that makes Americans look bad is always refreshing. They’re not all bad but it’s obnoxious to pretend they aren’t somewhat bad.

The Bourne series should be commended for successfully accomplishing what so many others have recently failed at. It is a consistently enjoyable trilogy that never takes itself too seriously and has purpose in each installment that justifies the necessity of three films to tell a complete story, rather than just being an excuse to rake in more cash. They are all three intelligent and compelling works, with THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM serving as a smooth, sophisticated closer that is only disappointing because it draws the entire ordeal to a close. I would love to see the series live on but it will lack the one driving force that has made it so compelling for so long now. Now that Jason Bourne knows where it all began, he will no longer be in constant, compulsive pursuit of the ultimate puzzle, understanding himself. Is there any more gripping a pursuit to be had?

www.blacksheepreviews.blogspot.com

[tabuno]

From the very beginning of the movie which seems disjointed and out of character of the first two movies, the audience is left in doubt as to Bourne's motivation and motus operadi. Some of the following scenes seemed derivative from SUPREMACY where instead of one chase scene where Bourne ends up going down, he is going upwards. There's the repeat ploy of Bourne from SUPREMACY of pretending of being one place while being in another, except that this time the ploy seemed too obvious and uncharacteristically too close in as a trap. The ending of the movie was also so American leaving few questions as to the outcome without the more intriguing ambivalence. The relationship between Matt Damon and Julia Stiles is left much more ambigious than is comfortable. And there is one scene that was so much more effective in SUPREMACY whereas in the ULTIMATUM the "Asset" is seen as just coming onto the chase scene without a lot of focus adding to the confusion of the chase scene. This being Greengras's second time with this franchase, it would seem taht he would have been able to iron on these cinematic distractions.

[Chris Knipp]

Paul Greengrass: The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)


Making more of the same seem new

Review by Chris Knipp

The Bourne stock is high. Paul Greengrass, who's made the last two, is a good director. He proved his mettle with his documentary-style history film about Northern Ireland, Bloody Sunday, and another one last year, United 93.

Once upon a time action films ended with a chase. In the stripped-down-action world of Jason Bourne, the whole film is a chase. And that is fine. Matt Damon is a brilliant action star; he is the Bourne franchise, as Bruce Willis is his. Bourne is a new kind of hero. He is a cipher who suffers, a hyper-kinetic version of a spy hero, because he doesn't know who he is, and everyone is his enemy, and he is always in a foreign country. The Bourne Ultimatum, the latest, but no doubt not the ultimate, of the series, begins with Bourne in Moscow, and then moves on to Paris and London and Madrid and Tangier and New York. Bourne is equally at home—and equally a stranger—in all these places, and we love this blurry world tour with bodies and bullets and cars flying. Jason Bourne doesn't know who he is or what happened but he has astonishing skills. He's a supreme human weapon, lethal and indestructible, and he speaks good Russian, French, German and Spanish and can open any door, get past any code, dodge any pursuer. He's more than a spy, and less: He's a wily trickster. He slips through everyone's fingers, if he even leaves them fingers to slip through. And that makes him a character of folklore, a creature of our dreams.

But let's not kid ourselves. With each successive sequel, the series is growing thinner. The Bourne Identity, which was based on a Robert Ludlum novel and directed by the young Doug Liman (Greengrass is ten years older), took the time to establish places and people and had the intense relationship between Bourne and Marie (Franka Potente)—something approaching a love interest. Potente had an air of recklessness and danger that made her a good match. This was the essential Bourne film. It began with Bourne emerging from the water, like some kind of sea birth. The Bourne Supremacy (the ante is upped in each title, as if screaming to be noticed) also had a long prelude full of tropical atmosphere. It had moments of tragedy and betrayal. The first film had Chris Cooper and Clive Owen and Brian Cox. Cooper and Owen dropped out, and we got Joan Allen and David Strathairn. Albert Finney seems a rumpled version of Cox, who's gone now, and he is underused.

But the spy-chaser machinery brought to bear against Bourne is really meaningless except as a foil. The CIA chase after Bourne is inherently absurd. Tim Wiener's definitive history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes, is just out and we know to put it rather crudely that the CIA story is a litany of failures and mistakes. There have been follies, and we'll never know how much money was wasted and on what. But even so, nutty as the CIA is, would all of Langley be marshaled in a giant war room to track down a single man—who only attacks when he's attacked—and whose threat seems to be that he may remember who he is and what he was supposed to do? Doesn't that make us all dangerous? The marvel is that the CIA can track Bourne on TV monitors all over the room that come up with sound and pictures and tap into cell phones at a yelled command from Strathairn. The believable part is that Bourne always dodges or offs the CIA "assets" who're after him and escapes from the net. And Bourne catches them all napping and they lead him directly to the information they seem to want to hide from him. That part is very convincing.

Ultimatum is a post-Abu Ghraib story, showing that hoods and water-boarding and sleep deprivation were used in Bourne's training. But in year seven of Bush II, the arrest of some CIA chiefs for using harsh tactics in their black operations seems unlikely. These are just brief allusions, anyway: the special ops, even though there's a new one revealed, "Blackbriar," were more fully developed in The Bourne Supremacy than here.

Greengrass uses a technique of very rapid editing and very unsteady camera (Liman's camera work did not require Dramamine, but his does). He introduced that in Supremacy, and he continues it in Ultimatum. This in time may date, like the zooms of the Seventies, but for now it makes the visuals seem fresh.

It always seemed Matt Damon was an awfully funny kind of matinee idol, a strange degeneration of the Hero: he looks more than anything like a burly bellhop. But he has proven in various films that he's a good actor— particularly adept at showing self doubt or emotional disconnection. I prefer Malkovitch's Tom Ripley to his, but his (in Minghella's film) gets at the core of Patricia Highsmith's antihero—his lack of affect. Though the Bourne action goes so fast you barely have time to appreciate the fact, Damon's obviously also an athlete. He may be no kung fu star, but better than that, he convinces you Bourne is not a showoff but simply a deadly physical opponent.

Given the increasing dilution of content, it's a bit surprising that the Bourne franchise films are seen as "intelligent" or even that they're seen as "spy" films. Yes, there's something classy about them, and they're not dumb by any means. They're battles of wits and skill as well as brawn and technology. And they are great fun to watch, even though the material is getting stretched.

David Denby cites Manohla Dargis as saying that "the drama of 'Identity' was existential (Who am I?) and the drama of 'Supremacy' was moral (What did I do?)" and concludes that "the drama of 'Ultimatum' is redemptive: How can I escape what I am?" Very neat, but rather artificial, since all these questions occur in each movie, and yet there is no answer in any of them. It is another kind of stretching, this time by the film critics, to attach profound significance to these three movies and make them into a trilogy. It makes more sense to imagine the filmmakers considering how they can make more of the same and yet make it still seem new. They succeed at that, and that's why the series can go on.

[cinemabon]

Chris, you alluded to Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes." He gave probably one of the finest and most illuminating interviews on Charlie Rose I have ever seen. Tim Weiner is a riveting guest. Rose brought out the best. Please take the time to watch it. I hope this link works:

http://www.charlierose.com/search?q=tim+weiner&searchTopic=-1&searchFromMonth=MM&searchFromDay=DD&searchFromYear=YY&searchToMonth=MM&searchToDay=DD&searchToYear=YY&searchFilter=tim+weiner&searchType=guest

[Chris Knipp]

Thanks, but actually I saw the interview at the time; that's how I learned about him and the book. I agree it was a great interview. I liked the guy too.