The Bourne Ultimatum: Movie Review

In "The Bourne Ultimatum," Paul Greengrass follows his excellent, Academy Award-nominated "United 93" with one of summer's best, smartest action movies.

The film proves a satisfying conclusion to a trilogy that began in 2002 with "The Bourne Identity" and carried forward in 2004 with the release of "The Bourne Supremacy." Each was a travelogue of espionage that took audiences around the globe as the amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) sought his true identity while efficiently taking down thugs and government agents along the way.

"Ultimatum" follows suit, but since this is the final film in the series, more answers are at hand, with Damon again succeeding at being a terrific--and unlikely--action hero.

He is everything you don't expect from the genre, which is one reason the "Bourne" franchise is so appealing. With his slight build and boyish face, Damon isn't here to flex his pecs and bark out clever soundbites designed to become catchphrases. Instead, he's here to think and to out-think, to fight and to run, and naturally to survive.

There's plenty of that to do here. In this movie, the actor is put through hell--the sort of hell no mere mortal could survive, such as falling off buildings and surviving horrific car crashes--and yet throughout, Damon remains mechanically cool and expressionless, which is a shift from the previous movies, in which his paranoia was allowed, at the very least, to roam within his eyes.

Not so this time. Even though he has CIA agents Pamela Lundy (Joan Allen) and her boss, Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), after him, he's more in control than ever. As he comes closer to piecing together his fractured life with the help of fellow agent Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles, the film's weakest link), his face remains a cold mask of determination, with his character's sole aim to uncover the full truth behind his lost identity.

To bolster the sense of Bourne's focus, Greengrass and his screenwriters--Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi--arm him with as little dialogue as possible. It's a decision that underscores Bourne's inward existence and which also prevents Bourne from raising the sort of questions that might threaten an audience's suspension of disbelief. One doesn't, after all, want him surviving a 70-foot fall off the top of a building and then have him talk about it. Best just to feel the rush and move on.

Beyond Damon, the strength of the franchise always has been in its exotic locales and in how the series uses them to full effect. No amount of computer animation or stunt work achieved on a backlot can ever trump, in this case, the thrill of watching a tense car chase through the streets of Manhattan, or a foot chase along the rooftops of Tangier.

The realness of these scenes has a dual effect--they suggest moviemaking that isn't afraid to get its hands dirty, and they also make the films as hard-nosed as the Robert Ludlum novels on which they're based. Helping to that end are Oliver Wood's raw cinematography, Christopher Rouse's crazed yet coherent editing, and a pummeling score by John Powell that doesn't stop until Bourne stops himself.

Grade: B+