The Bourne Ultimatum - Review

Director: Paul Greengrass
Writers: Tony Gilroy/Scott Z. Burns/G. Nolfi
Runtime: 112 minutes

Matt Damon returns as Jason Bourne in The Bourne Ultimatum, a movie so fast and lean that you’ll walk out of the theater saying, “That was great. Wasn’t it?”

As action movies go, it’s fairly straightforward. Jason Bourne is still suffering from amnesia, and doesn’t remember how he became a hitman. For reasons unknown to him, the CIA is still on his trail and wants to take him out. He again turns the tables on them by tracking them down and wrecking havoc in various hotspots around the world. Finally he faces off against the people who “created” him.

If this sounds like old news, it is. You might be sitting there saying, “Wasn’t that what the first two Bourne movies were about?”

The answer, of course, is yes. And that is virtually the only problem I have with Ultimatum. Matt Damon is fine in this installment of the trilogy (?). He is as heroic as ever, and he does a great job with the fight scenes. There’s virtually no room in the film for him to act, so it’s pointless to talk here about his acting abilities. If you want to see Damon act, have another look at The Good Shepherd or The Talented Mr. Ripley. He is superb in both. If you want to see him act as Bourne, then you will have to re-visit The Bourne Identity.

Ultimatum is well titled. It is the ultimate third in a three-part series. There’s no new story here, and not much character development. But the filmmakers are not stupid. They know that if they keep the film moving at breakneck speed, no one is going to argue with them. In fact, the word ultimatum is as misleading as the word supremacy was in the second film. How can a character be supreme when he still has another movie to go through before he comes out on top? How can he have an ultimatum with someone when he doesn’t give one?

The answer about the titling question is that they’re taken from Robert Ludlum’s books. That’s about all Ludlum’s material has to do with the films. The producer’s commentary on the other Bourne projects put that question to rest: he told the screenwriter to write whatever he wanted, but to keep the characters’ names intact. If you go out and buy Ludlum’s Bourne series, you won’t recognize much of them from the films.

I have no problem with that. Books were not made to be movies (the possible exception is Crichton’s Lost World, which reads like a script outline). Screenwriters have all kinds of problems when turning a novel into a screenplay. People that cry foul when they see a movie and declare that “the book was better” really don’t get it. They miss the point: the movie wasn’t supposed to look like the book. Never was. Never will be.

Books are books and movies are movies. The best advice I have for people that want to see a film that is completely faithful to the book it’s based on is this: don’t see the movie. There will never be a production meeting in Hollywood where the producer says, “Throw in another car chase,” and the writer replies, “But that’s not in the book.” The first thing the producer will say is, “Who cares?” The next thing he will say is, “You’re fired.” Because movies aren’t books.

Sometimes, to your surprise, the movie can be better. I think a great example of this is John Irving's A Widow for One Year. After reading the book, I thought to myself, “He should have stopped at the mid-point.” The first half of the book was fantastic, the rest of it a convoluted story about writers and their craft, and some other soul searching tripe. When I saw the film (renamed The Door in the Floor), I was pleasantly surprised to see that the screenwriter (Tod Williams, who also directed) knew more than Irving: he stopped the story halfway and left out the rest.

For the Bourne series, the producers and writers kept the titles, and more less threw the rest in the trash. On with the show.

If you’re an action fan, you won’t be disappointed. The fight scenes are well staged, and the direction is incredibly fast paced. The film is shot almost entirely hand held, and the editing is quick-quick. It works in most places. In others it’s plain confusing. You won’t get seasick, but you might get a bit lost. Still, it makes me giggle when people use ‘action director’ as an insult. In my mind, Schindler’s List is a hell of a lot easier to direct than Predator or Armageddon.

Think of all the set-ups that a director (in this case, Paul Greengrass) has to go through for one car chase. Weeks of work. Editing in your head. Saying “action” and “cut” two seconds apart. Over and over. “Action,” bottle over the guy’s head, “cut.” The next time you watch a good action sequence, hit rewind and concentrate on how hard that would be to produce believably. Directors must go through some sleepless nights wondering, “Will the stuff we shot today look cool, or like a jumble of crap?”

The only knock I have against Ultimatum is that it’s the same old, same old. The words still and again keep cropping up. Bourne still has amnesia. He still has creepy flashbacks. His own side wants to kill him again. He has to go to America again. Even the song for the closing credits is the same. Moby’s Extreme Ways, again.

If you liked the first two installments, though, then you won’t mind seeing Bourne win the day. Again.