Martial arts expert and all round super spy Jason Bourne returns with more unanswered questions in the third installment of the Bourne franchise which seems to get better with each passing film. Ben Johnson reports on the second sequel which will have you on the edge of your seat.
The Bourne Ultimatum
Distributor: Universal Studios Format: Region 2 (PAL) Length: 110 min. Aspect Ratio: Widescreen 2.40:1 Audio: English, French Subtitles: English (for the hard of hearing), Spanish, French Extras: Deleted scenes and five featurettes, feature length audio commentary with director Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
Year of Release: 2007; Origin: United States; Studio: Universal Pictures
Director: Paul Greengrass; Producer: Patrick Crowley, Frank Marshall, Paul Sandberg; Script: Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, George Nolfi; Cast: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, Albert Finney, Joan Allen.
Alternative Titles: N/A
Trailer: Click below to view the trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum
Plot Synopsis
Quickly following on from where The Bourne Supremacy left off, Bourne escapes the hoards of police in a Moscow undercarriage and winds up in London following a Guardian journalist who is investigating the Jason Bourne files. As Bourne continues to battle his amnesiac mind and a crack team of CIA snipers and surveillance teams, he tries desperately to piece together the first memories of his training as a brainwashed assassin while the bullets fly from a panicking US government eager to silence their indestructible critic. One very stern CIA Deputy played by David Strathairn wants Bourne dead, while CIA Deputy Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) is determined to keep him alive. They track Bourne from an intelligence unit in New York across countless continents in record breaking time, as the reluctant hero avoids assassination attempts in Waterloo station (the Guardian journalist isn’t quite so lucky), a hairy moment with a government sniper in Morocco and a violent car chase through New York, stopping off in Tangier, Milan and Paris on the way.
Review
Of course, this is just as relentlessly silly as the previous two films with as many loopholes and impossibilities as before, but when the adrenalin is set at such a dangerously high level as to whiz through almost two hours of screen time in what feels like an instant, the sheer joy of the Bourne films vastly undercuts any kind of questioning on the film’s realism. It’s really quite pointless to argue with Jason Bourne, someone who embodies all the savage charm of a coy super spy without all the pretense and camp of someone like that poncey 007. You wouldn’t catch Bourne driving around in Aston Martins and sipping dry martinis. The guy clearly hasn’t slept in three years and if he’s going anywhere, he’s taking the train. The only thing cars are good for, it seems, is ramming them into things.
There is no shortage of destruction in this third film which starts the suspense straight from the take off and doesn’t once stop to utilise the brakes, with British director Paul Greengrass (famed for his tense 9/11 film United 93) driving the film into all kinds of chaos and nail biting set pieces that severely test the audience’s nerve. I could have done without the role of Julia Stiles as Bourne’s long standing plutonic love interest, who looks longingly into Bourne’s eyes and then walks away (she does this three times). She helps Bourne in his escapades and is slapped on the government’s Most Wanted list for leaking information but narrowly avoids copping a bullet by being packed onto a bus and sent packing, leaving Bourne to continue on his trail of wreck and ruin alone.
Damon looks increasingly sheepish as Bourne tries to compensate for his violent tendencies, and it is getting progressively difficult to see the actor as that wimpish boy genius from Good Will Hunting and not the pectoral beef cake and super sleuth he portrays so magnanimously in this franchise. Any unanswered questions about Bourne’s assimilation into the covert government program is answered by the end of the picture, and this film links so brilliantly with the other two that you wonder where the filmmakers could possibly take the series next. He doesn’t die at the end so there could be another one. If it’s even half as good as the first three films then I say bring it on.
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