Jaw clenched, brow knotted, Matt Damon hurtles through The Bourne Ultimatum like a missile. He's a man on a mission, our Matt, and so too is his character, Jason Bourne, the near-mystically enhanced super-spy who, after losing his memory and all sense of self, has come to realize that he has also lost part of his soul. For Bourne, who rises and rises again in this fantastically kinetic, propulsive film, resurrection is the name of the game, just as it is for franchises.
Their sights set far beyond the usual genre coordinates, the three Bourne movies drill into your psyche as well as into your body. They're unusually smart works of industrial entertainment, with action choreography that's as well considered as the direction. Doug Liman held the reins on the first movie, with Paul Greengrass taking over for the second and third installments. And while the two men take different approaches to similar material (the more formally bold Greengrass shatters movie space like glass), each embraces an ethos that's at odds with the no pain, no gain, no brain mind-set that characterizes too many such flicks. Namely remorse: In these movies, you don't just feel Bourne's hurt, you feel the hurt of everyone he kills.
The Bourne Ultimatum picks up where The Bourne Supremacy left off, with this former black-bag specialist for the CIA grimly, inexorably moving toward final resolution. After a brush with happiness with the German woman (Franka Potente) he met in the first movie (The Bourne Identity) and soon lost in the second, he has landed in London. Stripped of his identity, his country and love, Bourne is now very much a man alone, existentially and otherwise. Damon makes him haunted, brooding and dark. The light seems to have gone out in his eyes, and the skin stretches so tightly across his cantilevered cheekbones that you can see the outline of his skull, its macabre silhouette. He looks like death in more ways than one.
Death becomes the Bourne series, which, in contrast to most big-studio action movies, insists that we pay attention and respect to all the flying, back-flipping and failing bodies. There's no shortage of pop pleasure here, but the fun of these films never comes from watching men die. It's easy to make people watch - just blow up a car, slit someone's throat. The hard part is making them watch while also making them think about what exactly it is that they're watching.
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Their sights set far beyond the usual genre coordinates, the three Bourne movies drill into your psyche as well as into your body. They're unusually smart works of industrial entertainment, with action choreography that's as well considered as the direction. Doug Liman held the reins on the first movie, with Paul Greengrass taking over for the second and third installments. And while the two men take different approaches to similar material (the more formally bold Greengrass shatters movie space like glass), each embraces an ethos that's at odds with the no pain, no gain, no brain mind-set that characterizes too many such flicks. Namely remorse: In these movies, you don't just feel Bourne's hurt, you feel the hurt of everyone he kills.
The Bourne Ultimatum picks up where The Bourne Supremacy left off, with this former black-bag specialist for the CIA grimly, inexorably moving toward final resolution. After a brush with happiness with the German woman (Franka Potente) he met in the first movie (The Bourne Identity) and soon lost in the second, he has landed in London. Stripped of his identity, his country and love, Bourne is now very much a man alone, existentially and otherwise. Damon makes him haunted, brooding and dark. The light seems to have gone out in his eyes, and the skin stretches so tightly across his cantilevered cheekbones that you can see the outline of his skull, its macabre silhouette. He looks like death in more ways than one.
Death becomes the Bourne series, which, in contrast to most big-studio action movies, insists that we pay attention and respect to all the flying, back-flipping and failing bodies. There's no shortage of pop pleasure here, but the fun of these films never comes from watching men die. It's easy to make people watch - just blow up a car, slit someone's throat. The hard part is making them watch while also making them think about what exactly it is that they're watching.
Discuss Add this link to... Bury
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