Author: broderic

In story telling there is a classic theory that every story has three parts, a beginning, a middle and an end. The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum constitute the trilogy about Jason Bourne. Yet, it seems after watching the final installment to be better off as a two-parter.

In the finale, Jason Bourne’s story picks up soon after the second. He hurriedly flees Moscow. While evading the Russian police, he fixes his wounds which leads him to recover even more memories from Treadstone. These memories makes him ultimately want to end it all, so he plans to find out why he is who he is to restore himself once again. The trail starts in London where he meets up with a journalist who just unraveled the secret CIA program that Treadstone is a part of. Of course, the journalist is a goner. Then the trail leads to Madrid to a former director who has intimate knowledge of the who and the why of Jason Bourne and Treadstone. He’s a goner, too. Bourne meets up with Nicki who should’ve asked for a desk job in Langley and they jaunt to Tangiers. In a thrilling scene, Bourne chases another CIA op from the rooftops of the city to save Nicki. This is why it’s so good. Eventually, we end up in NYC to the final scene of the second movie, and continue again for another final chase.

And that’s my problem with this installment. The first two had tied together into a neat little ending. This one feels as if it as after the denouement of the films and tacked on. At the end of Supremacy, he had finally found out who he is. But in this film, not really, and he seeks out the truth. He learns that sometimes you may not like who is staring at you from the mirror. This film felt like those twenty minutes in which you want to leave the theater after the end of a story except it’s two hours long.

Still, the action was great. Greengrass seems more confident and assured. He chose a more stylistic visual approach separate from his first Bourne movie and from following in Doug Liman’s footsteps. He uses this style to make the movie seems faster and frenetic. In the fight scenes, we are up close and in the room with the fighters, but we never lose track of what’s happening. In the car chases, the action is majestic.

Overall, it was a disappointment, but much, much better than the other trilogy enders this summer.

3 of 5 stars.