When I first watched The Bourne Identity five years ago, I found it to be a passably fun time, but pretty forgettable. I had no real interest in a sequel and skipped The Bourne Supremacy when it was released. Yet I kept hearing from people who felt the same way as I did about Identity that Supremacy was far and away better than the first. One evening I stumbled across Supremacy on TV and ended up watching it. I was astonished. This was how to make a sequel, I thought. This was Aliens. This was T2. This was Wrath of Khan. A large part of this had to do with the new director to the series, Paul Greengrass. Greengrass understood why so many sequels are awful, and why only a few succeed. A sequel has to be more than just another adventure with the same characters, but a deepening of an audience's understanding of those characters and the world they inhabit. Like Supremacy before it, The Bourne Ultimatum is able to build on what we've seen so far to create a more than satisfying conclusion to an increasingly impressive trilogy.Ultimatum does something I don't think I've seen a sequel outside of Back to the Future Part II do: it doubles back onto the previous installment, telling us what happened between the final action scene in Moscow and the epilogue in New York. As such, this doesn't feel like a new movie as much as a direct continuation of the last film. If you were to cut off the epilogue and credits on Supremacy and just insert this movie where they were, you'd never even notice that they were two different movies. This means that if you aren't totally up to speed on the last film, you'll be instantly lost. For some this might be a detriment, but to me it's a big plus. Greengrass and Co. assume you are an intelligent viewer who doesn't need everything spoonfed to you, and it makes for a much more fulfilling experience.
The basic premise should be familiar by now. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is an amnesiac hitman trying to find out who exactly he is. At the same time he is trying to evade people who want him dead before he remembers something that might ruin them. Unlike too many franchises, the Bourne trilogy makes a point of not just bringing back all characters who survived previous installments, but showing how their presence in the sequel is significant to Bourne's journey. Everyone has a connection to Bourne's story, and characters who played small parts in the first two installments prove to have a bigger overall role when everything is finally revealed. Take, for example, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). She seemed so insignificant in the past, yet she kept popping up. This time around we begin to realize that she has a direct connection to Bourne's past that he no longer remembers. Also back is Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), a CIA head who realizes that Bourne may not be the villain that her bosses make him out to be. She has proven to be a strong element to this series, and she keeps the scenes not focusing on Bourne interesting and gripping.
If the film suffers, it's with the new cast members. Great actors all around, but none quite fill the void left by people like Chris Cooper and Brian Cox. David Strathairn is the direct descendant of the characters played by Cooper and Cox, but he is never as intense or menacing as his predecessors. Adding a bit of needed gravitas to the villainous side, but with far too little screen time, is Albert Finney, playing a mysterious man who may hold the answers to Bourne's past. Strangely enough, I think that had the two actors switched roles, it would have worked even better. Finney can play menacing much better than Strathairn, while Strathairn can play mysterious with the best of them. Yet this is a minor quibble: both get the job done, and neither is the reason we're watching the movie in the first place.
The action here is the best of the series. Whether it be a cat and mouse game in a train station, or a car chase through New York, Greengrass stages set pieces that leave you breathless. Many people have complained about his shakycam style, and to a degree I understand that complaint. Yet at the same time, it pulls you in so much more because of how real everything feels. The fight scenes, the car crashes: they all feel more impactful, more intense. Sure, on occasion it becomes difficult to tell what is happening, but by and large, things are easy to watch and understand.
What elevates The Bourne Ultimatum above other action films is that it's actually about something. Imagine waking up one day and learning that you used to kill people, some of whom may not have deserved to die. How do you deal with that? The whole trilogy has dealt with that in some fashion, but here it is front and center. Bourne must struggle with the fact that he was once no different from the people being sent to kill him, and that had he not been struck with amnesia, he'd probably be in their shoes trying to kill someone like him. It's an adrenaline fueled morality tale.
I don't know that on its own The Bourne Ultimatum is a four-star film. Yet as a conclusion to a trilogy, it most definitely is. I doubt anyone would watch this as a stand-alone film, so I think the four-star rating is deserved. Few, if any, trilogies raise the bar with each installment, and none really come together as tightly as this one has. Everything falls into place by the end, and this has proven to be a journey I am glad I took part in. There are still a few threads left unfinished, and the possibility of a fourth film is certainly there, but I suspect that this will be the end to the series. Then again, Greengrass has proven he knows how to raise the bar each time, so maybe a fourth one could be a worthwhile experience one day.
