Transparent Christian Magazine

Preface: You know, the usual movie review follows a very predictable, boring format. You all know what I’m talking about. I don’t want to write reviews like that. So let’s make a deal: I’ll just tell you what I thought about the movie, without any pretention or the condescending tone of someone who knows better than you. You promise to read it and either agree with me or not. Deal?

Review: The Bourne Ultimatum

If you saw the first two, but somehow missed this one, just go buy the DVD sight unseen. It’s that good. The Bourne Ultimatum kicked my butt up and down the theater. It is aggressively pulse-pounding, rarely letting up in intensity for more than a few minutes. As they say in SuperCross commercials, “You’ll pay for the whole seat, but you’ll only need the edge!”

Twenty minutes into the film, after a nail-biting train station manhunt, I turned to my wife and said, “I immediately want to see this movie again, right away.”

The movie is directed by Paul Greengrass, who along with this franchise’s previous entry, The Bourne Supremacy, also directed the fantastic United 93. United 93 is tough to watch for some, because it deals with 9/11. And when I saw that film, I thought credit for the pounding of my heart went to how recent and how real the events portrayed were. Because 9/11 still haunts a great many of us, I thought that added to the film’s momentum. And maybe it did. But after seeing The Bourne Ultimatum, there is no doubt that Greengrass is simply the master of the action thriller. He chooses great angles for the action, has impeccable pacing, and expert timing.

The Bourne Ultimatum is full of chases, assassinations, flights, fights, pursuits, bombs, double-crosses, mystery, and surprises. And throughout all of it, Matt Damon’s Jason Bourne barely breaks an emotional sweat. The coolest thing about his character is how quickly he reacts to any and every situation. It takes him all of half a second to sense trouble and come up with the ideal way of dealing with that trouble. He’s a machine—and that’s half the point of these films…that the government made him something unnatural…something not of himself. For you fans of the TV show 24, Jason Bourne makes Jack Bauer look like a little whiny sissy girl.

Without question, the best sequence is the big assassin chase in the middle of the film. Shaken up from a nearby explosion, Bourne is simultaneously being chased by the police through city streets and over rooftops and running down the fellow assassin—who himself is chasing Bourne’s friend Nicki (Julia Stiles, reprising her role from the previous two films). If you’re not out of breath at the end of this scene, then brother, you aren’t alive. Easily the best of the Bourne movies, and maybe the best action movie of this year.

Final Rating: Outstanding! (I don’t do stars, sorry. They are cheesy. I will simply rate films with a one or two word exclamation).

Faith Perspective: I’ll follow each review with what I’m calling the Faith Perspective. I truly believe that we can find evidence of God in all sorts of places.

I’m not for a second suggesting that God wants you to see R-rated action movies—or that He doesn’t want you to—but I’m merely suggesting that if a person looks hard enough, they can find examples of God’s love in the most unexpected places. The Faith Perspective section of these reviews will be just that—areas in the film where I saw God…sections of the film that provoke dialogue that Christians should want to partake in.

Thematically, this film is rich for a discussion group. There’s identity, as Bourne continues to wrestle with who he is, and whether that identity is dictated by his past actions—something we’ve all confronted in our own, non-movie-spy way. This crisis for the main character plays nicely into the issue of running from our past, or holding on to it for too long.

You’ve got the usual good-versus-evil morality conflict. And yeah, the bad guys get what’s coming to them. It just doesn’t pay to be the bad guy—hmmm, maybe that speaks as much to karma as it does to Christianity.

There is something very selfless about Bourne in this film, even as his actions are propelled by the somewhat selfish notion to figure out his past. The chase sequence is thrilling because of the many layers. He’s running from the cops because he broke the law (or at least they think he did). He’s chasing the bad assassin guy because he might have answers—and he tried to kill Bourne. And he’s also trying to catch up to Nicki so he can save her. Just a few scenes earlier, Nicki had made a couple decisions to help Bourne that could easily have gotten her in trouble or killed. And you can sense during this chase that Bourne is desperate to protect her. And all that’s going on all at once!!

The clear message of these films is that we are none of us who are past suggests we are. We aren’t what we’re trained to be. We aren’t what people think we are. Rather, we are what we do. We are who we choose to be in this moment, at this time. And that, my friends, is a message I think should speak volumes to Christians and non-Christians the world over.

Jeremy Scott is a resident of Hendersonville, Tennessee. He is an avid blogger and you can read more of his witty and introspective writing at http://blog.kbsweb.com/.