Matt Damon as Jason Bourne is back at it--which is to say he doesn’t know who he is and where he’s going. Alzheimer’s? No. He’s a CIA killing machine turned amnesiac and he’s looking for answers.The Bourne Ultimatum is the third film in the series (following The Bourne Identity, 2002 and The Bourne Supremacy, 2004). It has the distinctive look and feel of its predecessors (cool color palette, quick cuts, and jumpy handheld camera work) and, if possible, an even more breathless pace. And don’t worry if you’re coming to the trilogy late; a few flashbacks detail critical info from previous episodes. Perhaps more amazing than Bourne’s assassin’s repertoire is how little we need to know from the previous films to understand this one. (Damon joked in a recent interview that the next installment will be called The Bourne Redundancy.)
This time around Bourne gets mixed up with a British journalist who has information from a top CIA official that could explain who he is and where he came from. London leads to Madrid to Tangiers to Manhattan. But the plot is just a means to an end--the fuse to ignite Bourne’s fission reaction. “Action” or “perpetual motion” in a Bourne film is an understatement.
The politics of the film (and its director, United 93's Paul Greengrass) are as thin as its characters. Drunk on its own power from The Patriot Act, Echelon, and Rendition, the CIA is depicted as a massive, bureaucratic, omnipotent, and spiritually bankrupt vipers’ nest struggling to neutralize the renegade Bourne instead of chasing the real baddies. CIA honchos order murders like the rest of us order White Castle but without any of the moral regret or gastrointestinal distress. “We’re the sharp end of the stick now. No more waiting for politicians to give us the okay to pull the trigger while the bad guys get away,” says CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), or something like that. He also gets many lines where he barks out orders to CIA underlings that always end in the word people. As in, “Let’s get this done yesterday, people!” It’s how we know he’s in charge.
The man on the run story is as old as Odysseus. Yet what the Bourne trilogy does so well is documentary-style violence that’s claustrophobic, exciting, never gratuitous, and surreptitiously cinematic. The car chase scenes in Manhattan are so tightly shot that you feel you’re in the car with Bourne spinning out of control, and yet so expansive you never doubt that you’re watching this deadly action unfold in Tudor City.
Does Bourne learn who he is? Does he defeat the CIA? Does he fall in love and live happily ever after with the elusive Nicky Parsons (Julia Styles)? Let’s hope not. A world where Jason Bourne has no reason to run is a tedious place populated by Adam Sandler comedies and Chris Tucker/Jackie Chan buddy flicks. Run, Jason! Run as if our film-going lives depended on it. Because they do.
