Theoretically, Paul Greengrass could make a thriller about laundry. Not money-laundering, not a heist film—just 125 minutes of folding socks. And somehow, someway, he’d make it so riveting, you’d wonder, with baited breath, whether that last gym sock gets folded.
Bourne Ultimatum isn’t just the summer’s best action movie, it’s not just the best of the three Bourne movies—it’s one of the finest thrillers released this decade. There’s not an ounce of fat. No unnecessary exposition. No cartoonish explosions. Like Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne himself, the film is lean, razor-sharp, and surges relentlessly forward.
It’s a two-hour chase film. Sometimes literally, sometimes figuratively. In what feels like 97 settings (from Madrid to New York) Damon bounds from ambush to ambush, out-smarting the CIA suits (a note-perfect David Strathairn) at their own game of high-tech cat and mouse.
Credit Greengrass for its pace, credit Damon for its heart. He speaks in only quips and one-liners, but somehow, through the purity of his single-minded pursuit, he exudes hard-boiled charisma. Damon received more critical fawning for his work in Syriana and The Departed, but Jason Bourne, oddly, is probably his finest acting.
Action writers and directors, take note: this is how you avoid clunky exposition—you do it in motion. Every detail the viewer needs--Bourne’s backstory, some recaps of the first two films, how supporting characters like Julia Stiles and Joan Allen (both excellent) fit in—is conveyed not in flashback, not in cheap voice-overs, but in the context of the action scenes themselves.
Most remarkable, unlike almost every other action film (ahem), the film’s third action actually has something to say, not just 30 minutes of shoot-‘em-up. Damon’s encounter with his “maker,” so to speak, gives the trilogy real closure.
But here’s hoping for more.