Afternoon Baseball

They say rare is the sequel that is better than its predecessor. While "The Bourne Identity" remains the crown jewel for its plotting -- superb, slow and subtle for a spy thriller -- that strength makes it the least exhilarating of the three.
"The Bourne Supremacy" kept the more sinister and complicated bad guy of the first film (the original Hannibal Lecter, Brian Cox) and added more gadgets, a bigger (studio and CIA) budget, and a conflicted Joan Allen. Most importantly, it added the whiplash-inducing frenetic ride that is watching a Paul Greengrass film. Yes, he can't keep the camera still. But no, it's not a bad thing. It puts you into the scenes. It's IMAX without the special setups.

"The Bourne Ultimatum" wraps up storylines. Unlike some negative aspects of reviews, I don't believe it's simply a rehash. As far as Bourne knew, as far as we knew, most of the answers had been provided by the end of the second film. In fact, that's not the case, and the third film is really a continuation -- an amazing feat for an action film. The latter two pics are essentially one four-hour film.

My major fault-finding with "Ultimatum" was in the dialogue. While the broader story never forgets its past, in plotting, details, imagery (the number of scenes that mirror, in minute detail, previous benchmarks is beautiful), and secondary characters, the actual script can be tedious.
If I had to hear "Where the hell is he?" or "We have a situation" or the word "asset," one more time...
But the film works, and it works as a story of a conflicted man who's just finding out, in complete, what he is, was and the tragic choices he made along the way.
There's no boredom, no let-up, and while I can't remember going to a movie in years with this high of expectations, I also can't remember leaving a movie more satisfied in years.

EDIT (08/26/07): Just an odd thought, but I wonder if Jason Bourne is in some ways a non-mutant version of Wolverine. I say this only because I was flipping the channels, saw "X2" on, and saw Brian Cox, the wickedly good upper-level CIA villain from "Bourne" 1 and 2, playing the man who, in a secret military program that Logan volunteered for, engineered through brutal, dehumanizing and memory-altering and -erasing methods a super-soldier. Just having Brian Cox in both seemed an interesting choice on somebody's part.

Labels: classic-review