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I caught the "The Bourne Ultimatum" today and it's a very satisfying thriller. I give it 4/5!!! Excellent! A must-watch.
This is the most satisfying thriller of the year, Ultimatum is the most relentlessly-paced entry in the frenetic series, starting off in mid-action just weeks after The Bourne Supremacy left off. An injured Jason Bourne, a.k.a. David Webb (Damon), escapes from Russia and is making his way through Europe when he reads an article about himself in Britain's The Guardian newspaper.
Seeking out the article's author, reporter Simon Ross (Paddy Considine), Bourne knows Ross' source had to be a high-ranking CIA official. He wants to meet Ross' source not to kill him, but to find out more about his true identity and who made him what he is today. Ross' article threatens to expose the super-secret Blackbriar operation, a clandestine ops group within the CIA that makes the previous films' Treadstone group look like the Watergate burglars. The CIA, obviously, doesn't want the bloody truth about what Blackbriar is doing exposed, so they send a team to snatch Ross. The reporter's surprise savior turns out to be Bourne, whom the CIA mistakenly believe is aiding Ross and wants to expose Blackbriar. This leaves Blackbriar boss Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) one option: kill Bourne and anyone else in order to protect the agency.
Once again on the run from the CIA and their "assets," Bourne receives aid from two unlikely sources: CIA personnel Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) and Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), both of whom have their own reasons for helping Bourne. Bourne's pursuit of Blackbriar leads him from Madrid to New York City, with lots of action and a high body count ensuing. What Bourne learns in Manhattan answers many of the series' biggest riddles, but also helps bring the films full circle.
Stripped of Treadstone and all of its double agent machinations, The Bourne Ultimatum is the easiest of the three films to follow. The premise is simple: The good guy wants to know information the bad guys have, and the bad guys simply want to kill the hero before he can expose them. That clarity is especially helpful since this sequel also utilizes numerous flashbacks to the first two films in order to bring viewers up to speed. These flashbacks are judiciously chosen and seamlessly integrated; their inclusion doesn't stink of "Previously, on Bourne" exposition.
Result is a breathless doozy that sends Bourne from Moscow to Turin, Paris, London, Madrid and Tangier, Morocco, before alighting in New York, from where the CIA's extra-legal assassination org has been tracking his movements with the most sophisticated and instantaneous of high-tech equipment. But Bourne continually beats the agency at its own game, outwitting and tricking its surveillance ploys and besting the toughest killers the company can throw at him.
Having settled certain scores in "Supremacy" three years ago, Bourne (Matt Damon) is determined to retrieve his memory this time around, so as to learn the identity he had before placing his skills at the service of the agency. Spurring this opportunity are articles by a London journo (Paddy Considine) in which revelatory details of Bourne's career were obviously provided by a highly knowledgeable source.
After a hair-raising pursuit of Bourne and the scribe at London's Waterloo Station, Bourne tracks the source to Spain, where he once again meets CIA op Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), and then to Tangier, where a CIA "asset," or hitman, is lying in wait. An amazing chase through the port city's twisty, hilly streets and the teeming passages of the old Medina, then over rooftops and through windows, and finally to a gasping, slashing, hand-to-hand combat scene in a cramped bathroom, is a marvel of technique and sheer logistics, and one that makes marvelous use of a legendary city rarely seen in Western cinema.
Along the way, it becomes clear the CIA has replaced its former black-ops program, Treadstone, with a new one called Blackbriar, which under stern topper Noah Vosen (David Strathairn) displays a propensity for rogue action and killing as a ready solution to all problems. As they listen in on phone calls and observe Bourne's movements their secret Manhattan HQ (never before has a feature film so well documented London's pervasive surveillance cameras), Vosen and colleague Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) argue over what to do with Bourne. Landy, who developed a certain affinity for the lone wolf in Berlin three years back, wants to keep him alive, while Vosen repeatedly insists upon whacking him. Latter's increasing frustration over the mounting failures to do so amply contributes to the very pure audience pleasure the picture generates.
Greengrass stages one spectacular set piece after another, virtually all of them in crowded public places -- train stations, airports, cafes, bottlenecked city streets -- that lend the action scenes an unsurpassed sense of verisimilitude. Bourne walks away from more than one auto crash that would have finished off lesser men, but he and we know that nothing is going to stop him before he comes face to face with his own Dr. Frankenstein, a man whose image periodically flashes through his mind.
Greengrass hasn't just topped the previous Bourne movies in every way, he's raised the bar for the spy and action genres for years to come, and he's done it in a movie without very little dialogue. This is Matt Damon's Cast Away except without a volley ball sidekick and with minute after minute of pulse pounding peril and violence instead of slow starvation. Damon plows through The Bourne Ultimatum like a force of nature; a silent, a living weapon on a mission of determined, unstoppable discovery. That's right, discovery. In The Bourne Supremacy Bourne made the bad guys pay. This time he's had enough and wants to know who he is. Bourne simply wants to be done with everything and he's not the kind of guy that takes no for an answer.
The action scenes are breathtaking and they include some of the best foot and car chases ever filmed. Bourne's prolonged bout with CIA asset Desh (Joey Ansah) in Madrid is arguably the most brutal hand-to-hand fight yet in the series, while the car chase between Bourne and another asset, Paz (Edgar Ramirez), is like The French Connection on steroids. Bourne's superhuman-like ability to shake off almost any injury, blow or crash is utterly ridiculous, although it proves to be a key source of sly humor in the films and for the character's undeniable coolness.
Every second, every moment of The Bourne Ultimatum is jammed with danger, pounding and pounding against the screen in unstoppable waves of energy and intensity. Bourne never lets up, not even for a second. His cameras keep rolling and Matt Damon keeps moving, putting plans together on the fly and eliminating obstacles one by one as he moves in a steady, straight line towards his final goal in a complicated, rhythmic dance of controlled destruction.
What is perhaps even more amazing than the movie's ability to do things that'll make your jaw drop, is the way it manages to do character development in the middle of all those car crashes and explosions, and does it without words. So much of the credit for that has to go to Damon, who even though he's not talking says volumes with what's going on behind that stoic, no-nonsense expression Bourne keeps wearing. Without saying a word, Damon puts together a complete picture of what his now familiar character is going through, not just externally but internally as well. Bourne is a living weapon, but a suffering, breathing, feeling weapon who, more than ever you'll find yourself rooting for.
Damon once again masterfully underplays Bourne, simmering with intensity that is only fully unleashed when he kicks ass and takes names (literally, since he wants information). Allen finds the humanity in Landy, while Stiles hints at the internal turmoil inside Nicky. Strathairn is like a bullet leaving the chamber: He will find his target no matter what. His casting as Voss is a brilliant subversion of the "man of integrity" persona he's become known for.
Live Free or Die Hard was great fun, but there's really nothing else quite like The Bourne Ultimatum in theaters this summer. That alone is reason enough to go see it. The fact that it's such a well-made film and wraps up the trilogy's loose ends with such style. The Bourne Ultimatum is easily the best movie of the summer and probably the best action movie of the year.
6:24 AM
