By Ray Pride Pride@moviecitynews.com
The Bourne Ultimatum (*** 1/2)
PAUL GREENGRASS HAS AGAIN TAKEN THE ESSENTIAL CIRCUS OF THE GLOBE-GIRDLING ACTION EPIC and distilled it to action/reaction/action. Arguably, The Bourne Ultimatum is as much a sequel to his United 93 as to the second Bourne entry. The dispensation with backstory in his 9/11 thriller was about the now: if we were there in that fated missile toward death, how would we 
react to what went on around us? We know the ending. What Greengrass excels at in his recent movies is sustaining moment and momentum. Knowing the then and then of the first pair of Bournes, we witness the character’s propulsion, blank-faced, cold-eyed, vein-templed, toward the idea of who he was or the fact of who he is in 2007, this killer who was tortured into shape by his own government, molded into one who reacts rather than acts, steeled by the language of contemporary spycraft and black arts. Bourne hardly speaks; the secret agency handlers like David Straitharn supply almost the entirety of the verbiage in verbal scowls comprised of the lingo of torture and “rendition” toward death in distant lands that are friendly to foul play. (Bourne’s recurrent memory of his training is comprised of two images: someone bound with their head covered by a black hood, and himself being tortured by an equivalent of waterboarding.) Greengrass exacts a narrative comprised of chases, with London’s coursing Waterloo Station the setting for one that seems unstoppable, at least until an acrobatic, athletic, mechanized chase through a Moroccan city’s streets and hillsides and rooftops that climaxes in confined space where there are two men, mano-a-mano, fighting to the death, jumpcut and accompanied only by the sounds of their lethal exertions. Finally it comes down to a book, a volume, an ordinary object, not Bible, not Koran, that becomes the deadliest threat. The winding path through the city toward this moment reduces the dilemma to its simplest part: kill or be killed. It hurts. In his movies since “Bloody Sunday,” Greengrass is less one-trick pony than one-man cavalry. This is stunning craft with quiet integrity despite the fury of its pace, and the final shot wittily suggests both a musical number and the opening graphics of a James Bond title sequence. With Joan Allen, Julia Stiles, Albert Finney. [Ray Pride.]
