My husband David and I saw “The Bourne Ultimatum” earlier this afternoon -and it was a thoroughly enjoyable couple of hours’ worth of entertainment, thrills, and surprisingly apt commentary that transcends mere “spy movie” convention.
The Trib had this to say about it, and it cheers me to see that I also picked up on the three important little words that boost this flick from “ho-hum second sequel action movie” to “great thriller that dares to be political.”
It’s (pant) not just (pant) a chase movie (whew!) — chicagotribune.com
People may be drawn to the film by the promise of thrilling chase scenes, but what makes it deeply satisfying are three words of dialogue. Admittedly, audiences haven’t even had a chance to hear those words before they fork over the admission price. Yet good movie dialogue can be prescient; it can capture the zeitgeist so well that when you hear it for the first time, it already sounds like an echo — an echo of what you, and millions of your fellow countrywomen and countrymen, have been thinking for a while.The three words: “This isn’t us.” (emphasis added -Blogula Rasa)
They’re spoken by CIA officer Pamela Landy Joan Allen, when asked why she’s helping the bamboozled fugitive known as Jason Bourne (Matt Damon). She means: Yes, covert action is crucial in a dangerous world, but there is a line. A line you don’t cross. Because if you do, you’ve broken something more critical than a window. Something precious and irreplaceable.
The three words summarize the national discomfort over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, over the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay. It’s a discomfort that knows no party or ideology. It is part of being an American, of believing in the uniqueness of our ideals.
A movie is just a movie. Occasionally, though, in the midst of a fiction thats slicing through the streets on hyper-drive, something odd suddenly shows up in the rearview mirror: reality.
It’s a breathtaking moment of bravura; after more than an hour of hyper-fast chase scenes on foot and by every other form of transportation known to man other than a unicycle, the action stops on an ordinary American street, in front of an ordinary building that hides an extraordinary facility, a woman with lines of strain on her face tells a man “This isn’t us.” It’s as if she’s admitting the shameful truth to herself for the first time, and confessing it to the younger agent who’s been so terribly damaged by his “committment to the program.” There’s a moment of confusion, and relief, on both their faces, as they take in the reality of the statement, and for a moment you feel an unexpected surge of hope and belief that things will somehow correct themselves and cancel out the excesses committed in the name of “freedom” or “security.” And that somehow, this will happen in reality as well as on the screen. Joan Allen was perfectly cast – again. Nobody else could have pulled of that little scene with Matt Damon in quite that way.
And then the moment is over and the turbo-charged drumming starts again, and Jason Bourne is off, chasing or being chased, and it’s an action movie again – albeit a very exciting one.
The car chases were amazing – topping even the last movie, that ended up with Karl Urban‘s dirty cop/spy character chasing Matt Damon’s amnesiac straight-arrow through Moscow’s streets, train stations, and access tunnels.
This time the biggest chase is saved for the Big Apple. You will believe that a car can be driven like a skateboard, and do many of the same tricks. Also, in one of the “exotic locale” cities, motorcycles can go into even tinier and steeper alleys than a Mini Cooper can.
The hand-to-hand combat — which was a feature in the first two movies that really blew your hair back if you like that sort of thing — was even more intense, grueling, and physically taxing than before. Yep, good actioner.
But those three little words make “The Bourne Ultimatum” an ultimately satisfying movie, because the act of speaking the truth presages the rule of law trumping the “black ops” programs, and shining a little light on what’s really been going on since the beginning of the series. And it shines a little light to the people sitting out there in the darkness, who weren’t expecting a tiny bit of political commentary with their popcorn. No more need be said, or the effect would be ruined and the movie would just become a sloppy hash of “democracy wins out” in the end – not that there aren’t a few satisfying scenes of Senate hearings and perp walks.
At the very end, the incessant drums-and-horns spy-guy soundtrack abates again for one little “zing!” of feminine strings, a little pizzicato of joy for a moment just before the credits roll, and there’s time to think “there could be a sequel, but why ruin a perfect ending?”
[tags]Bourne Ultimatum, Joan Allen, Matt Damon[/tags]