The Bourne Ultimatum

Ladies and gentlemen, I submit to you the perfect action movie. I do not mean to say it is the "best" action movie, but every aspect of its structure allows for the most kinetic action on the planet. What the hell is going in on the fistfights? Who knows, but I bet it hurts. Why do we care about Bourne's story now that we learned his real name? Because there are people in this world who still need a good punching. In this film series, Bourne's identity was just a MacGuffin anyway.

Even Bourne doesn’t seem to care about his past, at least beyond figuring out enough to know who he needs to punch next. Damon is a torrent of rage hidden behind an impassive veneer; we have seen him weather everything the CIA has thrown at him so far, but now he is simply ferocious. Greengrass' direction will always divide viewers, but I thought it worked in the last film and it's necessary here. Every shot, every line of dialogue, every chase, every punch will keep you on the edge of your seat. I don't count more than three relatively calm conversations, though I can't trust my senses after sitting through this barrage.

The conversations are the only weak parts of the movie, because it gives us a chance to breathe. The camera seems to be as riled up as we are, because it cannot stay still in these long conversations. When the dialogue is punchy, Greengrass can keep the shots relatively stable and keep editing before any shakiness becomes apparent. But these longform exchanges display all the weakness inherent in the shaky style. Thankfully, even these scenes don't provide us with more exposition than we need, and the sheer panic in the voices of the normally composed CIA heads Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) and director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) conveys what a fearsome, unstoppable force Bourne has become.

Allen continues to shine as the conflicted Landy. Her final scene in Supremacy actually occurs late in the timeline of this film, and that may seem grossly unnecessary but it's interesting to see what leads her to the decision to tell Bourne his name and to genuinely reach out to him (as opposed to all the traps attempting to lure him into an easy kill). Julia Stiles never stood out in the series even though she appears in all five films, but her work is a bit more substantive this time around. Like Landy, Nicky discovers that the real enemies are the CIA bosses and Bourne protects her when she divulges information about the upgraded Treadstone, Blackbriar.

Strathairn isn't as good a villain as the first two deputy directors, but anyone would look weak compared to Chris Cooper and Brian Cox. Actually, his acting isn't even the problem; he just has far less a personal stake in the action than Cooper and Cox's characters. Gilroy's scripts brings him into the story enough to make him interesting by the end, but the bad guy I found myself drawn to this time was the doctor who brainwashed and conditioned Bourne to prepare him for his missions. Albert Finney plays Dr. Hirsch as an indifferent, clinical physician who barely reacts when Bourne finds him because he's been expecting this day for years.

Of the three films, Ultimatum veers the closest to reflecting Bond (which by then had enjoyed a magnificent revival, mainly thanks to taking a page or two from this franchise) with its roaming tour through some of the world's most beautiful cities. The foot-chase through Tangier itself is an acknowledged lift from The Living Daylights. But the cast and crew didn't travel to Tangier, New York, Berlin, Madrid and London (some locations double as other cities like Moscow and Turin) to get paid to go on vacation. Take that Tangier scene: in The Living Daylights, Bond's run across the rooftops highlights the expansiveness of the scene. It wants you to know the trouble the producers went through to take you here. The Ultimatum version could have been anywhere. Bourne doesn't care where he is, and the action is visceral and personal. The only reason it's in Tangier is because it's more likely that he would be able to leap off roofs into apartments, run through them, jump through windows in adjacent complexes. Greengrass makes the action personal, which makes you a part of it even when its editing style bewilders.

Simply put, this is the best action film of the decade. It lacks the spectacle of the Pirates of the Caribbean, and it's certainly not as fun as the first film of that franchise. Yet it knows how to keep you hooked with a style that roots you to the back of your seat. The first film's plot informed the action, and the second worked vice-versa. Here, the two are one and the same. What I see in this trilogy now that I watch them back-to-back is the only trilogy I can think of that gets better with each installment. Star Wars slipped with Return of the Jedi, Army of Darkness, though still excellent, didn't match the quality of what came before. Even Lord of the Rings, the best narrative trilogy ever made (thematic trilogies such as Three Colors and Bergman's Faith trilogy are superior), stumbled with its rampant aside in the last act The Two Towers which added a brand new subplot that didn't work, not because it deviated from the source material but because it repeated themes established in the first film and ruined an interesting character (Faramir).

Bourne, however, is an action trilogy that delivers with all of its installments. Whatever major changes it may have made to the source material, the result is one of the most exciting franchises of all time. Its breakneck pacing and ability to make you care for this mysterious hero with only a scant moment of pause here and there gives it an edge no one else can touch. So please stop trying, Mr. Bond.

The Bourne Supremacy

A friend of mine commented on my review of The Bourne Identity that he would never watch the films because the sequels follow not the plots of Ludlum's books but stretch out the first book to fit the framework of the whole franchise. That might explain why plot takes a backseat in both of the sequels. Now, I can appreciate his feelings and of many other fans who might feel they lost the chance to ever see the books they enjoy on the big screen, especially a series as lauded as Ludlum's, so I hope he isn't too offended when I say that, from the bottom of my heart, I don't care. I don't care that Tony Gilroy decided to stick with the first book for three whole films, and I imagine I won't care when I finally read the books, no matter how much I love them. Why? Because with these sequels, Doug Liman, Paul Greengrass and Tony Gilroy made the best action films of the decade.

Greengrass takes over the director's chair for Liman, who still stayed on as a producer, to controversial results. Greengrass of course is the fellow to thank -- or blame, as many of us would -- for the rise of hand-held camera usage in major Hollywood films. His style of constant movement and breakneck editing makes even scenes of dialogue or a man packing a bag as visceral as a shootout. Greengrass' style spawned a wave of imitators, some of which benefited from this style (Collateral) but mostly detract and annoy (Public Enemies, Quantum of Solace).

The problem is that no one has Greengrass' knack for using this technique. His editing creates a disorienting, visceral experience, but he knows to give us at least some clue of what's going on. His restlessness comes with a vague hint of restraint, and his most interesting shots contain not action but dialogue, for he loves to quick-zoom on his actors' faces, better to read their buried emotions. I was also taken with a tracking shot through a subway that was so stable I pegged it as a Steadicam shot, only for the frame to bounce ever so slightly, signifying as a regular hand-held shot like all the rest.

Greengrass is perfectly suited for the task of filming Jason Bourne's ongoing adventure to recover his identity and memories, as The Bourne Supremacy takes some dark turns that push our hero to the edge. Still hiding from the CIA two years after the events of the last film, Bourne enjoys a bit of happiness with girlfriend Marie. They both are ready to run at any moment, but the CIA has relaxed the pressure enough for them to get a bit complacent. That, of course, is when the strike come, and Marie is tragically murdered as she and Bourne attempt to get out of a crowded village in India.

So now, Bourne turns from the hunted to the hunter. He still evades capture, but his thirst for revenge drives him to take the fight to the agents who will not leave him in peace. In the first film, Bourne was always surprised when he instinctively drew upon his fighting prowess, and that held him back somewhat. Here, he knows that intelligence agencies turned him into a killing machine, and his fighting is significantly more brutal. Greengrass photographs these vicious fistfights in such a way that every punch feels as though it breaks bones and ruptures organs.

The car chases are better, too. The biggest action piece of the film concerns a chase through the streets of Moscow, as exciting and confusing a sequence as you could ever hope to see. While I can certainly buy MI6 outfitting James Bond's Aston-Martin and BMW's with heavy armor (I mean, wouldn't you start there before trying to make it invisible?), but I never really bought his fancy little speedsters taking all the crashes and bullets and rockets they did. But Bourne commandeers boxy Euro cars, the kind that look as though they can take some punishment. And Lord knows Bourne's antics put them to the test more thoroughly than the best crash ratings.

While the story means far less here than in the first by virtue of stretching out the final act of a single book, The Bourne Supremacy is no less intriguing thanks to its actors. Brian Cox and Joan Allen deepen the levels of distrust and secrecy even within a single organization, as Allen's Landy attempts to sort out the bureaucratic mess left in the wake of Treadstone's failure. Abbot spends all of his efforts laying the blame for any loose ends on Bourne's feet and further raises Landy's ire against the agent when he pins the deaths of some of her agents on him as well. Allen is marvelous as the initially ruthless boss who begins to uncover the truth and doubt the necessity to find and stop Bourne.

Damon only improves upon the role he excelled at in the first film. He's got movie star looks, but also a plainness that allows him to fade into a crowd in any part of the world. Bourne only has about three facial expressions -- blank, tense and furious -- but Damon captures the torrent of emotions flowing underneath and presents a character who works as a three-dimensional study, not just some cartoonish, indestructible spy. Performances like this add to Greengrass' impeccable use of shaky cam (if only he was the sole person using the technique, because he embarrasses everyone else) to make a pulse-pounding thriller that lacks Identity's story but improves upon it in every other way.