MOVIE REVIEW: 'The Bourne Ultimatum'


Movie review in the Friday, Aug. 3 Oregonian....




"The Bourne Ultimatum" is minor miracle in a summer full of weak, perfunctory or downright lousy "threequels." It's a relentless finale to the "Bourne" movie trilogy that raises the stakes, pumps up the action and develops old characters while introducing new villains. And it never, ever loses that lean-and-mean "Bourne" vibe, or suffers from the lack of discipline that made "Spider-Man 3" and "Pirates 3" such expensive slabs of lard.

This time out, the story is basically one long globe-trotting chase -- an extended game of cat and mouse that bursts into arias of stunning violence. Six weeks after the last sequel, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is starting to get a better idea of who he is, what he's done and who made him lethal. And his name, real or fake, is starting to appear in print: A CIA mole is feeding stories about Bourne to a London journalist (Paddy Considine).

But when that journalist makes the mistake of saying the code word "Blackbriar" into a cell phone, the hunt is on.

Both Bourne and an unusually ruthless black-ops team (led by an unusually ruthless David Strathairn) want to have a few words with that mole. To reveal much more would spoil the fun, but suffice it to say that returning director Paul Greengrass ("United 93") starts delivering what fans want to see, and he delivers it in a way that feels white-knuckle from start to finish.

Also, you may be happy to hear, he slightly tones down the ADD shaky-cam editing that had even " Bourne Supremacy" fans reaching for their Dramamine.

Bourne moves like a shark from city to city. Bourne disrupts elaborate surveillance operations. Bourne knocks around flunky police officers in minimalist ballets of violence. Bourne gets in car chases and fistfights with CIA "assets" even more abstracted than he is. There's one incredible chase in Tangiers that moves from scooters to rooftops, ending in a fight scene that may be the best in the series. (It's certainly the most brutal.)

And the CIA infighting reaches a fever pitch as Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) bristles at Strathairn's eagerness to kill his own people to protect secrets and superiors (played by the partially preserved remains of Scott Glenn and Albert Finney).

Matt Damon is telling people this is the last "Bourne" movie, and I hope it's true -- because as a trilogy, the "Bourne" series will set a singular example. It's a politically charged, world-spanning espionage series where the stakes (Bourne's sense of self) are shockingly personal. It's no-baloney approach, established by "Bourne Identity" director Doug Liman and carried on by Greengrass, has inspired James Bond and Batman to reinvent themselves. John Powell's murderous pulse of a score stands as one of the great achievements in action-movie music. And in a marketplace that's increasingly filled with homogenous, computer-generated junk, the "Bourne" trilogy reminds us that the best thrills are honestly earned; that people walking around a train station can be more riveting than any action set piece if you build suspense; and that you can tell a single, intimate story across three movies without losing your nerve.
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A-minus; 111 minutes; rated PG-13 for violence and intense sequences of action.

'The Bourne Ultimatum' (The Oregonian, Aug. 3, 2007)

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Posted: Fri - August 3, 2007 at 03:35 PM        

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