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Bourne Three, Bad Guys Zero
By bukkhead | August 4, 2007
FILM REVIEW: ‘THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM’
Written by Tony Gilroy and Scott Z. Burns. Based on the novel by Robert Ludlum
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Rated PG-13
111 mins.
The Bourne Ultimatum overlaps with the end of the Bourne Supremacy, so it might as well be the same film. Same director, same story, with everything from the first movie brought in as well. This is not an idle comparison: it would behoove the interested viewer to watch all three films close together, as there are elements, artifacts, even pieces of dialogue, brought in from the first movie and incorporated into the third.
As simple as it sounds, this really is a case where the first movie plus the second movie equals the third movie. The action is more tense then in Supremacy, the camera work of even more unsteady and organic. Watching the action in Ultimatum is like watching all of the good parts from the first two movies all over again, but better, more meaningful for the greater context.
In this way, The Bourne Ultimatum finishes the cycle that was started and finished in the Bourne Identity. Think of it as a loop within a loop. In Identity, Jason doesn’t know who he is, finds out who he might be, and then decides he does not want to be that person anymore. This is the same cycle through all three films, with Ultimatum ending as Jason comes to terms with his past. The difference is, in Identity, Jason Bourne is the victim of his circumstances. In Ultimatum, he is given more responsibility for his own being.
Often in sequels and trilogies, you get almost no continuity between films. There’s the same characters, of course, and maybe the same setting. But one story has nothing to do with the next. And If the plot of a trilogy is constant throughout, then what you end up with is chapters in a story, so that any one film is incomplete without the others. It is my opinion that the three Bourne films do not suffer from this as much. Any one film is a story unto itself; all three films are another story. I won’t go so far as to say they movies could be watched out of order, but certainly one does not come away from any one of these thinking “I need to see the next one, to know how this all ends.”
This may be, in part, with the subject matter. As movie goers, we have been conditioned by movies that deal in ambiguities, the twists and surprises of intrigue, spy films and thrillers allowing us to be passive absorbers of the action. The Bourne trilogy is no different, even if here, in Ultimatum, we are finally given all the answers to questions introduced in the first two movies. But this is my point: the first two movies show how one can find resolution in right action without the benefit of having answers to all questions (so that, say, a Hamlet has no excuse for inaction) which is why they can stand alone. And the third movie than answers the questions anyway, further contextualizing the larger story arc.
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