Cast: Matt Damon, David Strathairn, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen

Director: Paul Greengrass

Running time: 1 hr 56 mins

Genre: Action/Thriller


REVIEW:

After the summer’s blockbustering splash of conclusive trilogies, albeit most of them have sunk worse than Titanic (no, not the film, I’m talking about the ship), here’s a finale to a trilogy that’s satisfying, exciting, and pumped up with adrenaline rush that would have you breathless and shaken from the thrill ride. Take that all you Spideys, Pirates and Shreks out there. Threequel had never been this fulfilling ever since RETURN OF THE KING.

Five years ago, when the character of Jason Bourne was unleashed to the world in BOURNE IDENTITY, it was nothing short but promising. The amnesiac-spy-based plot ripped from Robert Ludlum’s trilogy novel had been completely modernised, making it more attuned to the 21st century technology of CIA spying, and from IDENTITY to SUPREMACY, the plot may have thickened but certainly, it’s all about balls-to-wall hard-grit action thriller that’s unrelenting. This is James Bond – stripped from flashy cars, suave demeanours, sexy babes, and uber-sleekiness – but grittier, tougher, catch-me-if-you-can entertainment. Oh boy, first hour of the film and yet it never gives you air to breathe out of tension.

Paul Greengrass sits on the chair as director, after helming the superbly astonishing UNITED 93, bringing his realistic vision to ULTIMATUM. One gripping sequence is the Waterloo Station chase in London; it’s so three-dimensionally convincing, so expertly executed, that you could actually see people around looking surprisingly at Matt Damon running around the train station as though they never knew there a film being shot in the place. There are car chases, foot chases in globe-trotting scale from Spain, Russia, London, New York, one particularly outstanding across the Tangier rooftops in Morroco. It’s a bedazzling sequence, as Bourne leaps from rooftop to windows, making this spy a hands-on prodigy.

While the action scenes might be enough to unnerve the senses, its sheer intelligence uplifts the mediocre thriller prototypes and delivers a knock-out brain-sizzling plot. We may not be so smart-alecky but ULTIMATUM doesn’t insult our intelligence and carefully studies the character of Bourne trying to regain his integrity and personality that was taken away from him. After the chases he went through, we suddenly realise that at the end of the day, he was after all chasing himself. And Matt Damon’s toughened American boy-next-door looks and acting skills refines the Bourne character as a human in pursuit of his memories and his vindictive nature balances his frailty.

With performances of David Strathairn as a intimidating CIA chief, Joan Allen as feisty CIA investigator Pamela Landy, and Julia Stiles in a returning role, it’s mostly Matt Damon who’s the obvious standout. After all, this is about Bourne and his soul.

VERDICT:

Definitely, 2007’s best action-thriller. Hands down, ULTIMATUM is an apotheosis of how trilogies should end; a lesson to the ambitious threequels out there. Blockbuster? Hell, it’s a payoff.


RATING: A