Bourne to Run

Essentially, Nilay's right about the fact that Bourne is just one big chase scene. Take the "construction site" scene from the beginning of Casino Royale and the car chases from Bourne I and II and you have "Ultimatum." That being said, some points of interest:

- David Strathairn replaces Chris Cooper (in I) and Brian Cox (in II) as the new evil, kill-anybody, semi-villain secret-ops, government guy. He's a great actor who usually shines in supporting roles. He was OK in this one, but he could have been given better material.

- I love Joan Allen. As the one good apple in the entire U.S. Intelligence System, Allen's Pam Landy kind of teams up with Bourne in this one.

- One scene steals the thunder from all the others: a hand-to-hand combat sequence between Bourne and another U.S. operative ("Desh") in Tangiers, Morocco. The battle is probably the next most brutal close-fighting scene I've ever seen, after Kill Bill's "Jackass" fight between the Bride and Elle Driver. Really good stuff.

- Bourne is a little stupid in this one, unnecessarily (in my opinion) getting a journalist in trouble, being tricked into leading someone into a extreme danger (Tangiers, again), and strangely letting Strathairn's character know that he's in the CIA offices after deftly leading everyone out of the building. Of course, if he doesn't do any of these things, the movie probably ends, so maybe these actions were "necessarily" stupid. Fun, nonetheless.

P.S. About those inconsistencies Nilay mentions: I'm not too sure I've got that right. Near the end of the movie, Bourne calls Pam Landy and they have a discourse over the phone that sounds an awful lot like the one they have at the end of Bourne II (Supremacy, or whatever). In it, he tells her she looks tired before hanging up, and she stands up and looks out her office window all shocked. I thought, maybe wrongly-- I have to re-watch Supremacy -- that the dialogue was slightly different in that conversation than in Supremacy, and that they were specifically re-creating the old dialogue (the characters, not the actors) for the purpose of sending a message. I also think Bourne was in a different spot at the end of Supremacy when he made the call, but that's just speculation for now. The fact that the movie opens up with Bourne in Russia seems to suggest that what we see in Ultimatum is in fact what we see at the end of Supremacy. I also gotta assume Greengrass knew what he was doing, considering he directed II and III. In the near future, I will update you on my success/failure in noticing these inconsistencies/consistencies.

P.P.S. I prefer Franka Potente to Julia Stiles. I feel like Franka is so ugly that she loops around and becomes pretty. Julia isn't quite there yet.