The Bourne Ultimatum

Star Review

Quality-wise, 2007 was not the best of summers for mainstream American cinema. Yet one film united audiences and critics alike, chiefly by leaving us all breathless and cheering for more. The Bourne Ultimatum was the action movie as filet mignon: in every sense, the connoisseur’s choice.

Arriving in London, Matt Damon’s rogue agent Jason Bourne – previous assignments: 2002’s The Bourne Identity, 2004’s The Bourne Supremacy – picks up another lead in the quest to understand who he is, sparking a gripping game of cat-and-mouse. Bourne pursues those responsible for turning him into a killing machine, while the CIA, in turn, focuses all its surveillance cameras and most of its men upon Bourne.

As he did in United 93, director Paul Greengrass keeps the action real and immediate: he and editor Christopher Rouse – the film’s true hero – chop and shunt scenes with expert precision, from the opening runaround in Waterloo station to a frankly staggering last-reel car chase, from which even DVD viewers may yet come away with whiplash.

All of this is great, but we get real actors, too, as though Greengrass were aware he needed performers capable of registering at Ultimatum’s remarkable speed. Boyish in such comedies as Stuck on You, closed-off as the CIA yes-man of The Good Shepherd, a kinetic, pumped-up Damon here proves himself amongst the most versatile leads of his generation.

Around him, every scene pulses with class. Over at Agency headquarters, Joan Allen and David Strathairn perform a sophisticated white-collar double-act, while for a sidekick, Bourne picks up Julia Stiles, the thinking man’s intelligence operative. Even relatively minor roles are filled by such fine actors as Paddy Considine, Daniel Brühl (from Good Bye, Lenin!) and Albert Finney.

This was a rare summer sequel without an ounce of fat on any one of its frames, but it also delivers something more than sheer adrenaline: with its talk of ‘rendition protocols’ and its every angle covered by CCTV, it’s a film as thrillingly (and sometimes as disorientatingly) modern as an Antonioni or Godard movie would have seemed back in the 50s or 60s.

Mike McCahill on 30th October 2007

View all 124 of Mike McCahill’s reviews

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Film Description

Quality-wise, 2007 was not the best of summers for mainstream American cinema. Yet one film united audiences and critics alike, chiefly by leaving us all breathless and cheering for more. The Bourne Ultimatum was the action movie as filet mignon: in every sense, the connoisseur’s choice. Matt Damon is again on top form as the amnesiac super-spy, who might just be about to remember who and what he is...

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DVD Extras

• The original book 'The Bourne Ultimatum' by Robert Ludlum

Film Details

Cast

Joan Allen, Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Paddy Considine

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