Movie Vault: The Bourne Ultimatum

A 60-second review:

If you’ve read the entertainment section of any newspaper in the last couple of weeks, you probably know by now that the Bourne Ultimatum has been rated by critics and the general public alike to be a superior entertainment. I share in the consensus that it’s the best of the three Bourne films, and I would also say it’s the best ‘big studio’ film of the year, easily surpassing the other ‘third wheels’ that appeared earlier this summer: Spider-Man, Pirates, Shrek. I won’t recount the plot of the film, which in the main consists in one stunning action sequence after another (I found myself laughing out loud, in pleasure, several times during the movie, utterly astonished at what I was seeing on the screen), only to say that it brings Jason Bourne nearer to the answer of the riddle that has driven the series: who is he, and how did he become the killer that he is?

The film wants us to think that Bourne’s sense of remorse and his determination to discover the secrets of his identity provides the main personal moral conflict of the movie. I for one was rather curious at how such a transformation from ruthless killer of unmatched efficiency to a man of apparently resolute moral character was even possible. At one pont we see Pamela Lundy – a CIA officer who was his main pursuer in the Bourne Supremacy but who becomes his unexpected ally here, flipping through a file containing pictures of the men he’s killed. How does one murder so many people and then wake up one morning, regretting it all? And furthermore: now that’s he is on a quest to do the ‘right thing,’ so to speak, what are we to think of the numerous bodies – the collateral damage – that have been piling up over the last three films, in his wake? These are somewhat complicated moral issues that this film, and the Bourne series, never bothers to answer; I suppose it’s too much to expect, but their artistry is diminished somewhat, I think, by the failure to even address them.

More entertaining, and disturbing, was the film’s subtle political critique. The analogies which the film draws between Bourne’s training and the goings-on in Iraq, Guantanomo, and secret CIA prisons were obvious, but the film tries to make the point that it’s no longer rogue elements of the Agency that are tracking down Bourne but that the corruption reaches to the very core of our government’s response to ‘external threats.’ Our love of spy stories have familiarized us with the thought that those who operate in this world have always resorted to morally dubious means to secure morally justifiable ends. But this film, which shows the CIA operating with such ludicrous technical sophistication that you wonder why we haven’t caught bin Laden yet, says that those who have the means will ultimately invent the ends that allow them to use those means. Thus in this film the CIA bosses resort without hesitation or compromise to assassination, rendition, torture, and so on, securing brutal results with such ease and efficiency (except, of course, when it comes to catching our hero, Bourne) that the notion that it’s all being done in order to ’save American lives’ becomes absurd. It’s the old maxim of absolute power corrupting absolutely, but the spy thriller’s love of technology – here, represented by glistening hi-digital computer screens, faster-than-broadband communications connections, spy satellites monitoring every cell phone conversation, rapid deployment teams – draws our attention to the fact that absolute power relies on a machinery that’s growing increasingly sophisticated every step of the way.

My recommendation: Go and see Bourne Ultimatum, and enjoy it as the best action film you’ll see in a long, long while. But after it’s over, don’t dismiss it just because it’s an ‘action film’ – think about its overt and covert messages, too.