The Northern Light

Issue date: 8/7/07 Section: Movie Reviews

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While "Bourne Ultimatum" is a nice conclusion to the series, it isn't quite what fans might expect.

This film picks up exactly where the last one left off. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon, "Ocean's Eleven," "The Brothers Grimm") is in Russia and he's wounded. As he's trying to evade the police yet again, he starts to have flashbacks of memories from the past he can't quite remember.

This is the perfect introduction, setting up the instant and nonstop action that this film provides as well as the subject matter that is the focus of this film. But this introduction, as well as the film itself, assumes that fans have already seen the previous movies in this series and that they remember them.

The past films developed the plot and suspense of the series, and in comparison, the script for this one is a little light. This movie really deals with Bourne coming to grips with his past and bringing justice to the corrupt governmental system that created him, instead of developing a mystery to be solved like its predecessors.

If anything, the script is a convenient tool to plug in yet another contemporary suspicion of an all-powerful government that keeps using national security as justification for any number of evils.

However, the film does still work as a piece of the series. It continues to develop the main character of Bourne and reinforce aspects of his character that the audience already knew existed. And this time, a few of the bit parts that have been in the previous films are flushed out to provide more detail to the series.

Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles, "Mona Lisa Smile," "O") becomes a central character this time, instead of just another pretty face on screen, with hints of having been an important person in Bourne's past (hints that are never fully developed). Pamela Landy (Joan Allen, "The Upside of Anger," "The Notebook") also becomes a more intriguing and complex character as she begins to question the rationale behind her job assignment.

Yet for all these things in the film's favor, its greatest drawback is the visual choices of director Paul Greengrass. He may have done the previous film in this series as well, but this time his choices were not visually cohesive with the subject matter.

Continued...

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