If you liked the reboot on Bond in Casino Royale, then you’ve got to give big props to the gang behind the Bourne movies. The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy were both down to Earth spy movies that had basis in reality with all the stunts done manually and came complete with an emotional resonant storyline that carried over from one movie to the next. The hardcore, free running, Sony store supplied Bond played by Daniel Craig is as much Robert Ludlum as it is Ian Fleming.



Going in to The Bourne Ultimatum there was cause for concern. It was the third in the series be shown in a summer when number threes are hit-and-miss so far as meeting viewer expectations. And the Bourne movies, like Bond’s, have a formula to them too: erstwhile former government assassin Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) tries to put together the pieces of his past while running from the very people that made him and now want to destroy him. Doug Liman got the ball rolling in Identity, but it was the kinetic energy and shaky cam of Paul Greengrass with Supremacy that confirmed Bourne as the super spy of the 21st century.



Ultimatum picks up right where Supremacy left off, in the six weeks between Bourne’s escape from the CIA in Moscow to his phone call to Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) in New York. Bourne discovers that a British journalist has been digging around into matters involving Treadstone, with specific reference in his articles to Bourne himself. It turns out that Treadstone is not as defunct as the Agency’s upper-echelon would like people to believe and at the centre of it all is Deputy Director Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Bourne’s meeting with the reporter at a London train station goes poorly, but it sets Bourne on the path to finding out who he was and what he’s done. His travels take him from London to Madrid to Morocco and eventually home to New York City.



Ultimatum is solid from beginning to end. The story is tight, the action comes naturally and the actors are great in their roles, which are actual parts as opposed to place holders there to fill time between car chases and martial arts.



Bourne has definitely become a signature part for Damon, and I have a feeling he’ll long be remembered for playing the amnesiac assassin in the same way Connery’s connected to Bond. At the same time though, the contributions of ancillary characters like Allen’s driven, turned sympathetic Landy, or Strathairn’s Cheneyesque Vosen can’t be understated. They make the CIA office scenes work with their differing goals in the pursuit of Bourne and add a touch of dramatic tension as actors behind computers yell out coordinates while chasing everyone’s favourite Memory Charmed super spy.



Greengrass takes things up a notch action-wise, reining in his tremor-like camera work while at the same time maintaining the frenetic feel of the fight scenes, which are much more brutal in Ultimatum then they were in Supremacy. Greengrass pushes the limits with a rooftop chase across Tangiers, to a rush hour surveillance dodge in London’s Waterloo station to a brutal car chase through the streets of Manhattan. In the midst of it all is the idea that Bourne is fighting towards something, perhaps a final resolution to the questions that plague him. If there was a fault with the storyline of Supremacy, it was that Bourne often felt divorced from the action in his own film.



Is this the last film of the series? I hope not, I feel that Bourne is just getting started and certainly the story leaves things open to go either way depending on interest from the artists and the audience. If it’s the end it feels appropriate and the resolution is adequate. But there is that small opening in the door to give us more Bourne. So cue the Moby and crank it up.