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Damon leads fast-paced action in ‘Bourne Ultimatum'

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During my recent trip to South Africa, our “handlers” as I affectionately called the Fulbright-Hays team responsible for us during our seminar, had us so busy we could hardly see straight. We easily stuffed three months worth of visits, meetings and events into just 32 days.

Still, being a huge movie buff and film critic, I managed to make time in the last week to see a couple of films - one on the last day of our trip before we headed to the airport.

My first visit to a South African cinema held many surprises, like $6 admission tickets, popcorn which didn't taste like oil and cost only $3 for a large, candy for a couple of bucks and drinks for almost nothing. When my new South African friend bought our tickets, he arranged reserved seats since “The Bourne Ultimatum” opened that night - a worldwide release to avoid pirating. The reserved seat requirement was wonderful and the movie wasn't bad either.

This third installment in the Bourne film series has Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) seeking revenge for the death of his love and information on the agency that turned him into a killing machine. Once his intentions are known, he finds himself being chased by the people he is after and for whom he worked as an assassin. While revenge perhaps drives some aspect of his search, his main objective is to discover the truth about his own past and his true identity.

Like its predecessors, “Bourne Ultimatum” is nonstop, jerk-neck action, complete with rooftop chases, bullets flying, fist-popping fight sequences and shaky camera shots. Tony Gilroy, writer of all three Bourne screenplays based on the Robert Ludlum bestsellers, begins things with our hero (if a hit man can be a hero) on the run in Moscow where he breaks into a pharmacy to dress his own wounds. Soon he experiences distressing, detached flashbacks - an interrogation room, the muttered somewhat ominous phrase “Will you commit to the program?”- more flashes, more torture and emotional torment and then reality.

The story leaps weeks forward to a British journalist's (Paddy Considine) meeting with a CIA informant in a cafe in northern Italy, where the reporter obtains key information - about an agent named Bourne, about an operation code-named Treadstone. The deep-cover anti-terrorism guys (and gals) back at CIA headquarters get word about the meeting, and track the Guardian reporter back to London in an effort to capture the rogue agent.

Bourne, too, hears of the link and he is soon embroiled in a cat-and-mouse chase where the roles of who is the cat and who is the mouse are switched by the minute. Even within the CIA itself, heads are butted - between top agents Pam Landy (Joan Allen) and Noah Vosen (David Strathairn). Only one agent in the field actually comes to Jason's aide - familiar face Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles). She is his only ally. Back at the CIA, lines get crossed and backs get stabbed as the group converges in its attempt to quell Bourne in a final showdown - an anticlimactic one, considering the film's fast pace, that actually leaves an opening for another film although the novels end with three.

Damon is wonderful as Jason Bourne. He plays him well - unsmiling, somber and tense. He offers an air of uncertainty blended satisfactorily with a sense of control and determination. He is buff, blunt, somber and resolute to the point of obsession. Damon makes the role and the film. The story centers around three major action sequences - in and around Waterloo Station, on the streets of Tangier, Morocco, and in the glass and steel of midtown Manhattan - and thanks to Damon and director Paul Greengrass (nominated for an Oscar for last year's “United 93”) the movie's pacing and the tempo are remarkably enticing and gripping. The film never slows down to allow for a single dull moment and while the story is skeletal at best, the action and characters are worth the nearly two-hour run time.

For the most part, “The Bourne Ultimatum” satisfied my desperate need for cinematic stimuli and if the filming had been a bit less flashy and jerky and the story a bit more meaty, I would have been completely delighted. Still, in spite of its flaws, the R-rated third Bourne film entertains and will most certainly please Jason Bourne and Matt Damon fans, like me. I am placing a B in my gradebook. I needed a dose of action and I got it.

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