Film Review: The Bourne Ultimatum

To bad this is probably the last in the Bourne franchise 'cause they really do get better and better.

I saw this at sold out show on Saturday and it was great fun with very little downtime throughout the film. It really does jump from action scene to action scene but unlike Transformers there's an actual story and plot and my god I found myself caring about the characters.

I don't want to give too much away that would spoil the fun but in this *final* installment we find Bourne closing in on just what exactly happened to him to turn him from the kid named David Webb from MO (look at Missouri, producing bad ass assassins) into hard driving, always escaping, beat your ass with a rolled up magazine Jason Bourne (and if you haven't seen The Bourne Supremacy, please do, that magazine bit was the shit). He's in a race with his former bosses from the CIA, including Joan Allen as Pamela Landy, who may or may not be on his side, to find a CIA mole who knows the origin of Jason Bourne. What I like most about these films is that they somehow managed to get all of the cast back so even though the films are years apart it really feels like they were made back to back and someone was thankfully paying attention to continuity.

The action set pieces are some of the best I've seen in years. I thought it would be hard to top the rolled up magazine, however this installment finds Bourne kicking ass and taking names with a book. Hell's yeah. The great action set pieces were met with either audience applause or muted, "Oh my gods" which is always a good sign for action films. My only real compliant with this film, and the series overall, is that the action is filmed with a hand held camera instead of a steady cam. I know this is supposed to pull the audience into feeling like they're there, however it's just confusing and you can't really see what's going on when the fighting gets intense. Aside from that, it was great.