The Bourne Ultimatum

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Well, I think this might settle it. I watched my DVD of Ultimatum tonight with my dad, my third time seeing it, and I may have to declare it Dan's Favorite Movie of 2007.

Action movies are enjoyed by most of us stuffy movie buff types, but I suspect many don't really esteem them as art. Well, fuck that. I love action movies. Yes, the majority of good ones don't amount to much more than a fun time at the movies, a little escapism, etc. I know that. But the best ones, the ones that are genuinely thrilling, that have an action scene that rouses and excites you... that may be the greatest achievement of this art form. I mean, whatever it is that makes film unique and special... the way it tells a story or conveys a feeling or a concept or some abstracted idea with sound and visuals... if it can actually whip you up into a frenzy, make you care so much about what you're seeing that you forget that you're sitting in an uncomfortable theater seat holding a Cherry Coke, and just submit yourself completely to the movie... that's something. That's an achievement. That's art.

The Bourne Ultimatum is that, plus it's got genuinely top-notch acting and writing, and it's also the best political, anti-Patriot Act/Bush Administration movie of the year. (Take that, Rendition).

Oh, and there's a part where Bourne beats the fucking shit out of a guy with a hardback book.

OK, I can tell now this is gonna be a long post. I was thinking of starting my 2007 Horror Movie Retrospective, but that's gonna have to wait.

Where to begin? This is a movie that, on the surface, shouldn't be anything special. I mean, it's a sequel. The third in a series, where series' tend to suffer a drop in quality. It repeats many story elements and scenes from the other movies, which is usually the sign that they are out of ideas. Hell, the plot is essentially that, um, things weren't really wrapped up in part 2, and Bourne is playing catch up. Fuck, I mean, we're three movies in and he still has amnesia and the story climaxes with him uncovering a shocking memory for the third time.

The first one was a decently fun little action movie that suffered from bipolar disorder. It was like Doug Liman wanted to make both a dark, gritty action movie with some really heartless killer types, but he also wanted to make a stupid, fun summer action movie with lame comedy and a mandatory love story. I dug a lot of the action and the darker elements, but hated all that popcorn bullshit. Pick one or the other, they don't work together, Liman, you fucker.(I will give him credit for not going too far in the popcorn direction, especially with the lack of one-liners. There's that one part where Bourne stabs that dude with a pen, and he coulda made some "pen is mightier than the sword" quip, but they didn't go for it. Thumbs up.)

Then Paul Greengrass took over the reigns for part 2, and almost right off the bat he says "fuck you" to all of that fruity bullshit by having the love interest get shot in the head. Nice. What follows is a much darker, more exciting and compelling action flick that somehow, despite being abso-ludicrous, has a weird sense of authority and plausibility to it. And he has the camera shake all the time.

Well, Greengrass stays on board for part 3, and it's so similar to part 2, beat by beat, that it's almost a remake. But here's the thing: everything has been improved. If part 2 was 5 times better than part 1, than part 3 is 5 times better than both 1 and 2 combined. The movie is even darker. It's bigger and (theoretically) more "out there," yet also more believable and authoritative. The acting and character work is better. He even shakes the camera more. Part 2 is what I think of as a "test-run movie." They tried the style out there, made the template for a new kind of action movie, and in part 3 they perfected it.

About that shakey cam. Some hate it. In some movies, I hate it. But I don't think anyone has ever done it any better than Greengrass and Co. (In fact, from what I can tell from the DVD extra features, his AD Dan Bradley deserves a lot of the props for this). Even when the camera is goin fucking crazy, they always make it clear what you're seeing. And then there is a lot of brilliant editing that ties it all together.

Let's see, where to go next... the action, perhaps? Well, it all rocks, but my favorite is the extended chase and fight sequence in Tangier. I'm not one for hyperbole, but fuck it... this is one of the best action scenes of all time. I'm hard pressed to think of many that beat it. It genuinely thrilled me. I was hungover the first time I saw it, and I got so excited I was actually worried I was going to puke.

I love the way it just builds and builds. It starts out slow, as Bourne trails another assassin, and there is a lot of tension boiling under the surface. Then it morphs into a motorcycle chase, and we are treated to some pretty cool stunts. Nice, I like fun shit like that.

When it turns back into a foot chase is where is really starts to blow me away. Because then it becomes a chase within a chase within a chase. We have Julia Styles' character being chased by the assassin. Then we have the assassin following her, while Bourne tries to follow both of them. Then, while Bourne is trying to do that, the cops start to chase him. Let me throw out a pretentious word of praise: masterful. The writing, directing and editing of this scene, juggling all these threads and making them coherent and exciting, is masterful.

So, when it gets the point where Bourne starts jumping through windows to get from building to building, you figure this is as good as anything you could hope for. There's one shot where the camera actually follows Bourne out a window and right into another one that may be the best, most pure action shot in movie history. It the the epitome of action.

And then it culminates in an all-time great fight scene.

All this complicated editing/rapid fire use of visual information pays off well in other areas of the movie. There is a great scene where the government is trying to track a target at a terminal, using all the surveillance and intelligence at their command. It quickly cuts from camera to camera, to the henchmen spying from vans, to guys spying from roofs, etc etc. And then it shows, mostly just with the visuals, how Bourne out thinks and undercuts all their efforts.

Nathan Lee wrote an interesting review where he discussed Ultimatum as a stealth sequel to Greengrass' United 93 for this very reason. Both movies show vast, powerful intelligence systems, and how they either breakdown or are circumvented. (This is also a major theme in his Bloody Sunday) And that gets me to the perhaps overlooked political element of this film.

This is the best criticism I've seen in a movie of the patriot act and all that, and it does it subtly and without making speeches. We see the constant presence of surveillance and storm troopers, and the way it is manipulated for shady reasons. Characters throw around terms like "rendition," and Greengrass even slips in some waterboarding imagery. He trusts us to just see that it's wrong, and doesn't get all preachy about it. Joan Allen has a line here or there criticizing the behavior of the government spooks, and Bourne has some harsh words for an evil bureaucrat at the end, but it's not something underlined. An audience member could easily ignore it all and just have a good time. And I love that. Greengrass actually succeeded in making an intensely political movie, without making it seem preachy, condescending, or worse, make it into heavy-handed Oscar-bait.

I'm not going to talk too much about the acting, because everyone is great, except to praise Matt Damon. I know no one will ever get an Oscar for an action movie, but damn is he great here. I mean, he takes a completely absurd character and makes him not only believable, which is a feat in and of itself, but also fleshes him out and makes you care. And he does it with very little dialogue, and very subtle changes in his expression. That shit is a lot more impressive than, you know, playing a retard or a Holocaust victim.

Oh! The character work. Good shit. I like the way everyone is very emotionally reserved in this movie. I mentioned that Damon communicates a lot by doing little, and that's true of the script in general. I like the part where Julia Styles implies that they used to have a relationship, and Damon doesn't say anything. He looks like he might, but doesn't, and we know it's not in his nature to have much of an emotional outburst. Then later, after he's basically ruined her life, and she has to go on the run, you think he's going to apologize or thank her or something. Instead he just says "It gets easier." What a softie.

I mentioned earlier that this one is like a remake of part 2, but better, and there are more components of this I wanted to discuss before signing off. First is the morality of the films.

There is a running, admirable theme to the trilogy that violence and murder is ugly work, and taxing to the human soul. Of course, the fact you are being asked to accept this during an action movie is something of a contradiction, but part 3 gets it best.

In 2, Bourne has tried to leave the violence behind him, but he's dragged back in. When he kills the last Treadstone agent, Greengrass says on the commentary, it's played as if he's an alcoholic falling off the wagon. It's a bad thing. Bourne recovers a memory, and it's of him killing two innocent people. At the end, in a unique scene for an action movie, he finds their daughter and confesses what he did to her.

But then there is a revenge element. There's this dude who kills his girlfriend, and of course the movie builds to them facing off. They have Bourne kill him by default, in a car wreck, where Bourne gets out and he's already dead. But the bottom line is, it satisfies our blood lust. We want him dead, hence we want violence. Also, when Bourne exposes the evil government bureaucrat, he refuses to kill him, but then the guy kills himself. So, again, audience bloodlust.

The final film corrects this. Bourne comments that apologizing to his victims families isn't enough. The film has him kill another deadly agent, and also plays it as sad and ugly, basically the same beat from part 2. The memory he recovers this time is of him murdering a man at the government's behest, and he doesn't know who the guy is. It's even more ugly.

There's a big car chase with a hitman type, and it ends in a car crash very similar to part 2. Only this time, when Bourne gets out, the guy is still alive. But Bourne let's him live. And when Bourne faces off against the evil bureaucratic this time, he refrains from killing them again, and the movie is content to simply have him arrested. So, Bourne makes a better attempt at putting non-violence (or, at least, non-murder) into practice, and so does the film itself.

Aw, fuck. I could just keep going on and on, but I'm gonna stop here. This is a lot. This is enough. I love this movie, and I think this post begins to explain why.