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I hardly fit the demographic for this type of film, at least on the surface. For those who like action films that explode with fights and chases and car crashes, these films heartily satisfy better than most. But that's only context. The text is a person on a quest to figure out just who he really is and who he serves--and it's this deep text that connects the Bourne films to many of its viewers, the search for identity, community, purpose.
The brilliance of the Bourne films is in the craftmanship--nothing is ever totally explained. There really is no spoiler to reveal here because--and this is why there could actually be another Bourne film--while Bourne finally remembers, we, the audience, won't share in that entire memory.
Bourne is a different man in the Ultimatum--he is grieving the loss of Marie, still fresh in his memory. (Pay attention to the time sequence in this movie.) He's lost the innocence his amnesia provided him for a time, and which was also refreshed by Marie's love for him. He remembers enough to weigh him with guilt, sin, and remorse and, of course, he's been forced to kill against his will & repeatedly to survive. He's an outcast, hunted by his former family and unable to reform new relationships without endangering them. There's a mechanicalness about him.
There's a sequence of scenes with Julia Stiles (reprising her role as Nicky Parsons) that recalls Bourne's association with Marie. They talk in a off-highway restaurant--as Bourne & Marie once did on the way to Paris. Boyish Bourne has given way to unemotional Bourne--his eyes look off-center & they keep glancing about. Later, Bourne won't be cutting Julia's hair, or dying it. Bourne runs alone.
Of the three, Ultimatum won't be my favorite & it may be because Bourne's earnestness, his hopefulness, has been replaced with such weariness...and resignation. And it also felt transitional; it felt like a set up for another Bourne film. But the first half of this movie is as brilliant as any of the 3 movies and you definitely want to be there for the very start.
Some viewers complain about Greengrass's shaky camera style of shooting, but I find it an authentic representation of just how fast these encounters go between top fighters. The mano a mano between Bourne and an assasin will thrill you--in some ways, it reminded me of a scene in Hitchcock's Torn Curtain, when Paul Newman, in an agonizingly endless scene, and with a little help from a woman, had to kill a German assigned to follow him. Hitchcock's purpose in that nevenending scene was to show just how hard it is to kill a person, and Greengrass achieves the same thing here.
Finally, the technology--the kind Bush wants to employ in his so-called Patriot Act--is absolutely frightening. We are all potentially under surveillance. We can so easily be the wrong man or woman in the wrong place at the wrong time and have our worlds turned upside down. Mention certain words on your cell phone, and you, too, might have to hit the road.
