Bourne Again
- Title: The Bourne Ultimatum
- IMDb: link
When I heard the words above in the trailer chills went up my spine. I enjoyed The Bourne Identity (read December’s review) but I was blown away by the second installment The Bourne Supremacy. So here was the sequel I was waiting for all summer. The result was a good, though slightly disappointing, film that is still better than most of the sequels this year.
We begin, seconds after Jason Bourne’s (Matt Damon) survival in the tunnel, with his escape from Russian police. The final scene from The Bourne Supremacy, the phone conversation between Bourne and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) is later expertly woven into the main plot of this film. From there we move to the shadowy government forces still attempting to track Bourne down and hide the dirty secrets which are locked in his brain. Both Allen and Julia Stiles return, and although Stiles is given a larger (and somewhat continuity-questionable) role, Allen is demoted into the lone good guy in a room full of snakes who will do whatever it takes to keep their dirty little secrets hidden.
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Part 2 of the “Bourne Trilogy”, Bourne Supremacy, brings us to Marie and Jason hiding out under new identities. Jason is having regular nightmares and keeps a journal under Marie’s tutorage to find out whom he is and what happened in his past that got him where he is at now. He is finished with being a CIA assassin and had warned the agency’s flunkies to not come after him or they would be sorry. 
The Bourne Identity starts out with a bang, or rather a splash. Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) is found a drift in the Mediterranean Sea with only 2 bullet wounds and an implant with a Swiss bank account number. Jason awakes a little off kilter not sure of his surroundings or his own identity. When the ship comes ashore the doc gives him a few bucks and a warm coat then sends him along his confused and amnesiac way. Bourne heads to Zurich to find out what is in the safe-deposit box, is it his identity? Nope, there are multiple passports, a gun and plenty of money in different currencies. At this point he doesn’t know where to turn, until he is forced to run being chased by a secret ops agency that claims to have trained Bourne and know his true identity. Using fighting skills he didn’t know he had, Bourne works his way through the streets of Zurich only to be cornered and offering $20,000 for a ride to Paris with the lovely Marie (Franka Potente). Reluctant at first, Marie turns him down, but realizes she could really use the cash and accepts the offer. Waking in Paris with an uneasy feeling Marie ends up caught up in the search for Bourne’s identity and his heart. The two duck and hide escaping one assassin after another searching for the answer.
It’s been twenty-five years since Robert Ludlum published The Bourne Identity and fifteen years since the third and final book of the series, The Bourne Ultimatum, was published. With the popularity of the new Matt Damon movies, Ludlum’s estate gave the project of resurrecting the series to Eric Van Lustbader. In hindsight, it would have helped if someone had made sure Lustbader had actually read Ludlum’s books. Lustbader’s The Bourne Legacyis a sequel of the worst order; a horribly written dime store novel, filled with characters that are only shadows of their once vibrant selves, full of countless continuity errors as the author gleefully violates the rules of the series, rewriting it to make it his own. Anyone who thinks they can do a better job with an author’s characters than the author himself should read this to see what happens when such material is put in the wrong hands.
