The Bourne franchise has done the chase sequences
and transcends them passed the storytelling element and turned them into a
story. Roger Ebert admitted, “Jason Bourne's search for the secret of his
identity doesn't involve me in pulsating empathy for his dilemma, but as a
MacGuffin, it's a doozy.” Someone finds Bourne with a fake identity, wants to
know who he really is and goes through three movies finding out as fast as
Sonic the Hedgehog runs. For those who have seen the ending of “The Bourne
Ultimatum” and if that is telling us anything, it’s possible that there will be
another sequel to clear everything up.
Ebert mentioned, “That said, so what? If I don't
care what Jason Bourne's real name is, and believe me, I sincerely do not, then
I enjoy the movies simply for what they are: skillful exercises in high-tech
effects and stunt work, stringing together one preposterous chase after
another, in a collection of world cities with Jason apparently piling up
frequent-flier miles between them.”
“The Bourne Ultimatum” continues with Bourne’s
determination, driving abilities, his brainpower in out-smarting his superiors
and even his good luck. An actual person would be able to have their life with
the events showcased in this movie, for the actual reasons that they would have
died in the exposition in “The Bourne Identity” and never would have lived to
be in “The Bourne Supremacy.” Ebert described, “That Matt Damon can make this
character more convincing than the Road Runner is a tribute to his talent and
dedication.” It’s very rare you see a character you care about although you
have no clear knowing if he could be real.
In this movie, Bourne is on an anxious chase through
London, Madrid, Moscow, New York, Paris, Tangier and Turin, while CIA agents in
America trail him using a stunning variety of high-tech gadgets and techniques.
Ebert said, “I know Google claims it will soon be able to see the wax in your
ear, but how does the CIA pinpoint Bourne so precisely and yet fail again and
again and again to actually nab him? You'd think he was bin Laden.”
Does anyone know why they want Bourne so badly? He
is the reason why the CIA has this dangerous secret extra-legal black-ops
division that breaks laws in the USA and overseas, and you would say: “Well, of
course!” The CIA operation, previously called Treadstone, has been renamed to
Blackbriar. Sounds better, doesn’t it? Ebert described, “It's like if you
wanted to conceal a Ford plant, you'd call it Maytag. Seeking a hidden meaning
in the names, I looked up Treadstone on Wiktionary.com and found it is a
"fictional top-secret program of the Central Intelligence Agency in the
Jason Bourne book and movie series." Looking up "Blackbriar," I
found nothing. So they are hidden again from the Wik empire.”
In his distressed chase to find those who are
hunting him down, Jason forms a comradery in Madrid with CIA’s Nicky Parsons,
reprised by Julia Stiles, who is given an entire dialogue to say with some
weight before Jason is off to Algiers and crashing through windows and living
rooms in the Casbah. Ebert said, “I think I recognized some of the same steep
streets from "Pepe Le Moko," which is a movie about just staying in
the Casbah and hiding there, a strategy by which Jason could have avoided a lot
of property damage.”
Obviously there are adrenaline-rushing car chases, impossible
jumps over high places, smart paired antitheses and quick decisions. Sometimes
we go back to CIA’s base (although certainly a secret CIA black-op would not be
concealed in their own base) and meet agent Pamela Lundy (Joan Allen), who
things there is a possibility of some defense on Jason’s behalf, and her boss Noah
Vosen (David Stratharin), who could be the one who brought Bourne in this
secret CIA division, since he wasn’t in the previous two movies. We finally
then see a blurry person in Bourne’s memory pull focus and, in one of the great
aspects of the Talking Murderer, explains everything instead of punching his
face in. After that we get another thrilling chase.
The director, organizing difficult effects and stunt
teams, is Paul Greengrass and he not only makes (or looks like he creates)
fascinatingly long takes but executes it without attracting attention to them.
Ebert said, “Whether they actually are unbroken stretches of film or are
spliced together by invisible wipes, what counts is that they present such
mind-blowing action that I forgot to keep track.”
There are two kinds of long takes: the ones you’re
supposed to notice and the ones you don’t notice, because the action doesn’t
make you notice them. Both have their reasons: directors either want to show
how the plot explains the protagonist, and the director wants to show the
action without distractions to help the impression everything is actually
happening.
Ebert admits, “But why, if I liked the movie so
much, am I going on like this? Because the movie is complete as itself. You sit
there, and the action assaults you, and using words to re-create it would be
futile.” What really happens to Jason Bourne is primarily unimportant. What
matters is that a story must be told, so he can escape go towards it. Ebert
ended his review by saying, “Which leads us back to the MacGuffin theory.”
My brother had asked on my 18th birthday
what movie I wanted to see. When I mentioned this movie, my siblings and I were
set to go since we all loved the Bourne series. After we saw the movie, all of
us had our nerves shot and our adrenaline running since this movie was that
awesome. My brother himself was getting excited, leaning over to my sister and
me saying how engaging the movie was. I promise you that we all enjoyed this
movie so much since it goes from fist-fight to car chase and back and forth. If
you haven’t seen the movie, stop reading the review and go see it. This is the
best of the series so far, I guarantee that.
Although I thought that maybe the Bourne series
ended here, another one was released, which we will look at next week in the continuation
of “Jason Bourne Month.”
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