The Borne Ultimatum - HD DVD

The Borne Ultimatum - HD DVD
- Dan Ramer, DVDFile.com
This film is based on the third and last of Robert Ludlum’s Bourne novels. It brings Bourne and the viewer full circle, revealing his identity and his creation. In the first film, Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is found near death with no memory of his identity or how he came to be floating in the ocean. He’s instinctively driven to uncover his past. He’s led to a Swiss safe deposit box in which he discovers his photo on a number of passports, each with a different name. He finds an ally in Marie Kreutz, (Franka Potente), a German woman living in Paris. He battles shadowy figures within the CIA who want him eliminated. Ultimately, after eradicating or exposing the unscrupulous within the Agency and gaining the assurance from the people associated with the Treadstone project that he’ll be left alone, he retreats to a remote part of the world with Kreutz, hoping to stay anonymous and unnoticed.
When director Paul Greengrass replaced Doug Liman for The Bourne Supremacy, he ramped up the action and the lethality. The couple’s tranquility is shattered when an assassin catches up to Bourne and Kreutz becomes collateral damage. Bourne assumes that Treadstone has betrayed him and brings the fight to them. His foe within the Agency is Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), who suspects that Bourne was responsible for the deaths of two CIA agents in Berlin. Landy is aided by the former head of Treadstone, Ward Abbott (Brian Cox), who has an agenda of his own. A fledgling agent working for Landy, Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), becomes both a threat and a sympathetic ally. The film climaxes with a chase and firefight in Moscow, where Bourne once again defeats overwhelming odds to survive.
The visuals changed in the second film. Hand held and shoulder mounted camera work added a sense of immediacy but also evoke an irritating sense of vertigo. The motion on the big screen simply becomes annoying. Director Paul Greengrass returns for this third film, his jerky and unsettling camera work intact. His intent seems to be to ramp up the action sequences, both dramatically and quantitatively. And that’s where I felt he went too far; my biggest complaint about The Bourne Ultimatum is that it’s so long on action that there’s little time left for deviousness and twisting plotlines.
The film picks up the action ten minutes after the events of The Bourne Supremacy end. Bourne flees from the Russian authorities, eludes them, and escapes Moscow (we don’t know how until it’s revealed in the supplements indirectly). By the way, the unemployed Bourne has been on the run for three years and travels all over the world freely; how does he pay for all that?
The Bourne Ultimatum is essentially a series of action sequences set in various locations - Moscow, Berlin, Madrid, Tangier, Paris, London, New York - with short intervals of exposition in between to move the plot along. Bourne’s greatest nemesis is now CIA Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), who runs the program that Bourne will expose if he’s successful in discovering the truth about his past. Conspiring with Vosen is CIA Director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn), vulnerable for his authorizing the program. Skeptical, potentially confused, and with mixed loyalties are Landy and Parsons. Bourne will persist and uncover documents about the program responsible for his situation and the man who made him what he is, Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney).
By now, if you’re possibly wondering why I’ve consumed so much space discussing events in the first two films and have been so meager with my comments about the third. It’s simply because the intricacies of the third film’s plot consume so little screen time that any more in-depth critique would give away entirely too much. But lest I’ve created the impression that I didn’t enjoy The Bourne Ultimatum, allow me to allay those fears right now.
The Bourne Ultimatum is a terrific action fest, briskly paced, and overflowing with how-did-they-do-that moments. For example, there is a rooftop chase sequence in which Bourne ultimately leaps from a roof through a window one floor below. The camera follows his jump. How did they do that? (All is revealed in the supplements.) If you are immune to the irritatingly jerky camera work, this film delivers almost non- stop action for 116 minutes. One could make the argument that the groundwork was laid in the first two films and now it’s time for balls-to-the-wall action. Taken in the context of the trilogy, this is a suitable climax.