The Bourne Ultimatum
I saw this several weeks ago, and the details have faded from memory, but as action hero movies go, this one is a good one and seems to be part of a new trend to make our superheroes less super, more vulnerable, and at least a tad more believable. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is the spy movie counterpart to Batman: haunted by demons of the past, not much of a talker, and unparalleled in hand-to-hand combat. In this third movie installment of the Bourne franchise, both Joan Allen as the good CIA boss and Julia Stiles as the good CIA agent are back, and that’s a welcome change from the habit that many serials get into (such as 007) where each movie requires a new leading lady. Also refreshing, neither Stiles nor Allen plays a leading lady in the Bond sense. I found this movie gripping and entertaining. Director Paul Greengrass makes liberal use of handheld cameras. In fact, Bourne is able to get a steadier look through his ridiculously high-powered spy scope than us poor schmucks get at most of the action in the movie, so much does the frame jerk around. But that’s part of what makes a fairly straightforward action flick more engaging: we are struggling to keep up with the action almost as much, it seems, as Bourne is.
I was astonished to hear some time after I had seen the movie that Bill O’Reilly had labeled this movie unpatriotic, presumably because it mentions that the U.S. Congress is supposed to have oversight of the CIA and there are some corrupt CIA agents. This movie is so far from being anti-American that it gives me a sick feeling to imagine what kind of America O’Reilly dreams of when he says that this is a movie that the “America-haters” will love.