The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)

Watched on 2023-08-13

I hadn’t seen this since it came out but I liked it even more than I remembered. Easy to see why it sparked so many imitators — none of which captured what make it so good, they mimic the form without understanding how it relates to the content.

15+ years on it has a readily identifiable war on terror vibe. The story telling is economical and doesn’t patronise the audience (i’m looking at you MI: Dead Reckoning) and the action scenes are tense and brutal (for a big mainstream blockbuster). I loved how un-glamorous the locations are; bland offices, public transport, anonymous flats in anonymous town houses, even the bit set in North Africa is rigorously un-exotic.

Bourne’s super power is so apt too— it’s all about using the infrastructure of the connected city and the surveillance state in his favour, a power fantasy for bored office workers taking the eurostar in the same way Bond might have been for an international business traveler of an earlier era. The most thrilling scenes are all about evasion and master of the information environment rather than direct confrontation (though thats the necessary pay of). The Waterloo scene!

These things are all present in the earlier films but this entry really understands and perfects them.