The night before I went to see The Bourne Ultimatum on the big screen, I happened to watch The Bourne Supremacy again on DVD.
The plot of The Bourne Supremacy went like this: Jason Bourne is under attack from his own people because he knows too much about the nasty work that‘s gone on behind the scenes. An asset is sent to kill him. (An asset is a CIA assassin.) The asset fails at his task. Jason goes on the run again thinking sad thoughts about his lost lady love. Pamela Landy, who’s in charge but not really in charge, has an idea that Jason isn’t just a loose cannon, but she is continually put down by her superiors. Her superiors act suspiciously. Surprise, surprise, her superiors turn out to be corrupt. Jason defeats the assassin, and brings down the corrupt superiors. There are many car chases.
The plot of The Bourne Ultimatum went like this: Jason Bourne is under attack from his own people because he knows too much about the nasty work that‘s gone on behind the scenes. An asset is sent to kill him. (Did you remember that an asset is a CIA assassin?) The asset fails in his task. Jason goes on the run again thinking sad thoughts about his lost lady love. Pamela Landy, who’s in charge but not really in charge, has an idea that Jason isn’t just a loose cannon, but she is continually put down by her superiors - a different lot of superiors, but they act just as suspiciously as the previous lot. Surprise, surprise, her superiors turn out to be corrupt, and making lots of money out of the CIA. Jason defeats the assassin, and in the process brings down the corrupt superiors. There are many car chases.
Notice any similarities?
The Bourne Ultimatum is loud - and it‘s not just because I‘m getting old that I thought it was loud; it is loud. The Bourne Ultimatum is full of car chases and spectacular crashes, chases of people up and down buildings and in and out of streets, and there are several unpleasant deaths.
Does it all sound familiar?
In order to add tension, I suppose, the camera is forever on the move, even in the quiet scenes, so that our eyes get tired trying to adjust to what’s going on. This may account for why my brother and sister-in-law went to sleep during the movie. Or it may be that there is really nothing to engage the attention.
This kind of jittery camera movement on a big screen this is just plain annoying.
But the photography in the various chases is worse. The cutting is so fast that no shot lasts for more than a second or so. It reminded me of the worst excesses of that overrated musical, Moulin Rouge, where the dancers are never seen in one shot for more than a moment. For all we know they could be standing still.
In The Bourne Ultimatum, the audience can barely work who’s who and what’s what and where we are in the car chases. Many of the shots are blurred, perhaps disguising action that isn’t what we might think it is. When the assassin gets back in on the act towards the end of the movie, the logical sequence of events remains a mystery. Bourne’s vehicle is almost written off, yet rather like Herbie the VW, it keeps on going.
Bourne himself survives falling off a building in a car - something we‘ve all done in our spare moments - and being smashed into by everything in sight - an insurance nightmare for all the other vehicles. He never gets whiplash, he never bangs his head on any of the hard objects in his vehicle, he never breaks an arm or leg or damages any vital organ. Apparently we’re meant to believe that Jason Bourne is Superman in a new disguise.
And even the assassin is indestructible. At one point he’s virtually wiped off the map. A few scenes later he turns up without a scratch.
No one is required to act in this movie. All the roles are written as being obvious from the outset. There are no surprises. And when Albert Finney turns up late in the movie, he looks so much like the villain in the previous movie, that for a moment we think that villain has come back to life - or else managed to shoot himself in the head in front of a witness and survive.
We know Matt Damon can act, because we’ve seen him do so in several good movies in the past. In the Bourne films (like everyone else) he’s required to do very little more than look bewildered, serious and determined. The stuntmen do a good deal of the acting for him, though it has to be admitted Damon has put on a fair amount of muscle for these movies.
The Bourne Ultimatum, I hate to say, is basically absurd, derivative, and hard on the eyes. And did I mention loud?
