The Bourne Ultimatum is a 2007 film based loosely on Robert Ludlum's novel of the same name. A sequel to The Bourne Supremacy, it stars Matt Damon reprising his role as Ludlum's signature character, amnesia-suffering CIA assassin Jason Bourne. Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, Albert Finney, and Joan Allen co-star. The cast reprises their roles from the previous Bourne movies, with additions such as Strathairn, playing a CIA department head; Paddy Considine,as a British journalist; and Edgar Ramirez as a new assassin sent to terminate Bourne. The film continues the saga of Jason Bourne after he survives the harrowing Bourne Supremacy car chase in Moscow, Russia, and follows the character as he travels to Paris, London, Madrid, Tangier and New York City to uncover his real identity, while the CIA continues to send assassins after him.
Paul Greengrass directed the film from a script by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, George Nolfi and an uncredited Tom Stoppard[citation needed]. The producers were Patrick Crowley, Frank Marshall, Paul L. Sandberg and Doug Liman, who directed the first Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity.
The Bourne Ultimatum was produced by Universal Pictures and was released on August 3, 2007 in North America, where it grossed $69.3 million in ticket sales in its first weekend of release, making it the highest August opening.[citation needed] The film is scheduled to be released on August 16, 2007, in the UK and Ireland.
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The movie begins immediately following the car chase near the end of The Bourne Supremacy, with a wounded Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) evading Moscow police and breaking into a medical clinic to treat his wounds. He then goes to Paris to tell Marie's brother that she is dead. He reads an article about himself and an "Operation Blackbriar" in The Guardian written by journalist Simon Ross (Paddy Considine) and goes to London to find out what Ross knows and who his source is. The CIA also tracks Ross to find out who his source on "Blackbriar" is. Bourne arranges to meet Ross at the south entrance of Waterloo station. When Ross arrives, Bourne sees CIA agents following him and plants a prepaid cellphone in Ross's jacket to give him instructions on evading surveillance. At the same time CIA official Noah Vosen (David Strathairn), the head of the reactivated Treadstone known as Blackbriar, sends an assassin to kill Ross and his source, who they believe he is meeting at the station. After a few minutes, Bourne gets caught on a surveillance camera, allowing Vosen to realize how Ross is able to evade his men so well. Bourne keeps giving Ross instructions, but Ross panics and jumps out from hiding, giving the Blackbriar assassin a clear shot. In the ensuing chaos Bourne rushes to Ross' body to steal his notes. From the notes, he finds out that Ross's source is Neal Daniels (Colin Stinton), the CIA Madrid station chief.
Deputy Director Pamela Landy (Joan Allen), a key figure in the second film, is brought on ostensibly to help capture Bourne, but in reality as a scapegoat in case Blackbriar goes public. The CIA discovers that Daniels was the source and sends a team to his office, but Bourne arrives first, neutralizing the CIA team when they arrive. While there, he meets Nicky Parsons (Julia Stiles), transferred from Berlin to Madrid, who tells him that Daniels escaped to Tangier and decides to help him escape the CIA reinforcements. When they arrive in Tangier they realize that the CIA sent another assassin, Desh Bouksani (Joey Ansah), to kill Daniels. Nicky, who has not been listed as rogue yet, sends him a message telling him to meet her to get a new phone, allowing Bourne to follow him to his target. Shortly after their meeting, Desh gets the message to terminate Nicky and Bourne after he is done with Daniels. Landy disagrees that they should both be killed, and quits the mission to help Bourne.
Jason Bourne about to confront Desh in TangierBourne follows Desh, but he is not able to prevent Daniels' death. When Desh returns to kill Nicky, Bourne evades pursuing Moroccan police, fights Desh, and eventually strangles him to death with a towel. He then uses Desh's phone to send a fake message to the CIA saying that both he and Nicky are dead. At the morgue Bourne looks through Daniels' charred papers to learn the location of the CIA substation in New York City. Nicky is forced to go into hiding to keep from being killed by another assassin. Bourne goes to the New York substation, where the ending of The Bourne Supremacy is repeated exactly, calling Landy from a building across the street while watching her and Vosen. He finds out that his real name is David Webb and is told his birthday is "4/15/71", a code for the address of the training facility at 415 East 71st Street. Bourne then sends a text message to Landy to arrange a meeting, with Vosen and his team following her the whole way. This turns out to be a diversion, allowing Bourne to enter Vosen's now vacant office and steal the classified Blackbriar documents.
Bourne arrives at the training facility where he gives Landy the documents before entering the building. When he enters, he meets Dr. Albert Hirsch (Albert Finney), the doctor in charge of Treadstone's psychological training. With his help, he remembers that as Captain David Webb he volunteered for the program. One of Vosen's men finds that Bourne's real birthday is Sept. 13, 1970 and that "4/15/71" was a code. Vosen heads there and confronts Landy as she is faxing the classified documents. Bourne decides not to kill Hirsch, but is soon confronted by another Blackbriar assassin Paz. After convincing Paz not to kill him, Bourne is forced to jump from the roof of the building into the water to escape Vosen, who fires at him. A few days later, Nicky Parsons is in hiding, Blackbriar is completely uncovered, and Vosen and CIA Director Ezra Kramer (Scott Glenn) are arrested. A news report Nicky is watching mentions that David Webb, identified as the source of the Blackbriar documents, was seen falling into the East River, but that his body was never recovered, and in flashback, Bourne is seen swimming away.
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aRTICLE COURtesy of : http://www.philly.com/dailynews/features/20070803_Bourne_again.html
When we last visited assassin-turned-avenger Jason Bourne, he was facilitating the suicide of a renegade CIA bureaucrat.
The guy was played by Brian Cox, who is on the speed-dial of every casting director who needs a sinister big shot. So the big problem in "The Bourne Ultimatum," which again finds the reformed Bourne cleansing the CIA of upper-echelon rogues, is finding an actor with the built in creepiness of Cox (the original Hannibal Lecter).
The best that "Ultimatum" can come up with is David Strathairn, a fine actor, but a guy who's probably made too many righteous John Sayles movies to properly fill Cox's big, slimy shoes. (Cox is like a size 13 sinister big shot, Strathairn a 10.)
In "Ultimatum" he plays right- hand man to a CIA director (Scott Glenn) who needs to kill Bourne to preserve an ongoing cover-up of the black ops cesspool (now retasked to combat terror via "rendition") that spawned Bourne.
The sudden need to get Bourne arises from reports in a British newspaper by a reporter (Paddy Constantine) who wants to expose the operation - we're in London a few breathless minutes before moving on to Turin, Madrid, Tangiers, and New York.
Those worried about the CIA's ability to combat terrorism will be heartened to learn, through "Ultimatum," that the agency controls every security camera in every city in the world, and monitors every phone conversation.
Every time the Bourne trail goes cold, some CIA apparatchik announces that somebody, somewhere has said the word "Blackbriar" and instantly our "assets" are speedily deployed. (Woe to the CIA if Blackbriar happens to be the name of an Irish bar.)
Director Paul Greengrass and his handheld cameras depict this constant hustle and bustle with great urgency, and the movie (with that punchy John Powell music) has such a caffeine-frenzy feel to it that it's possible not to notice that the plot has as many holes as Bourne's amnesia-stricken memory.
And that it's basically repeating the big beats from "The Bourne Supremacy" - "Ha, I'm looking at you right now," or "Ha, I'm calling you from your own office." And the plot's the same - the CIA races to get to Bourne, Bourne races to get to the CIA to find the men who indoctrinated him into the program that turned him into a remorseless killer.
In the middle is an agent Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) whose regard for Bourne softened when she learned that he was now a remorseful killer.
Anyway, a few excellent car crashes and bombings aside, "Ultimatum" rests upon too many lapses in credibility - part of the plot is based on alleged CIA abductions of terror suspects in Sweden, Macedonia, and Italy, but it's the agency's Wild West show on the streets of Manhattan, the movie's big finish, that looms as the big eye-roller here. *
Produced by Frank Marshall, Patrick Crowley and Paul Sandberg, directed by Paul Greengrass, written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi, music by John Powell, distributed by Universal.
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