Hunting for his past memories and identity

Rating: 10/10 (7 February 2015)

The movie "The Bourne Ultimatum" (2007) is an action/thriller that was directed by Paul Greengrass and written by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, and George Nolfi. The Bourne Ultimatum film is based from a 1991 novel by American Author Robert Ludlum. The film is the third part of a trilogy series so to completely understand the details of this film and what is taking place you must see the two prior movies: Bourne Identity and Bourne Supremacy. The main character of the film is Matt Damon as Jason Bourne who is an ex CIA agent who has lost his memory and identity and is now being sought by the CIA for an operation gone badly. David Strathairn as Noah Vosen and Joan Allen as Pam Landy are the CIA characters who are heading up the pursuit to get Jason. Their fear is that Jason will remember who he is and his knowledge of the secret operation – Treadstone. The underlying theme in this movie Jason realizes very early in the previous films, which carried over to this one, is that one must be careful things or people may not seem as they are. As one line from the movie states and showed to be very true, "It is funny how different things look, depending on where you sit." (The Bourne Ultimatum, 2007)
The Bourne Ultimatum is a "mind-blowing action" (Ebert, 2007) film that takes you behind the scenes of the CIA black-op and some of their secret operations. This series picks up right where the last film left off with Jason wounded from a Russian assassin and running from the Moscow police. Paddy Considine as Simon Ross is the character of a British journalist who is investigating the secrets of Operation Treadstone and Jason's past when he is provided with lead about "Operation Blackbriar". So what was "Blackbriar" and it's significant to Jason? These simple words promote a series of intense scenes of Jason trying to figure out what this means and how to protect Simon.
The camera angles in this film will put you in Jason's shoes as he is being watched and sought after, as a target of the CIA, while he is hunting for his past memories and identity. The fast pace on your seat chases provide some impressive special effects with Jason jumping from building to building, through windows while fighting off numerous guys at one time to the remarkable car chase with one scene showing him driving off the roof of a building backwards. The film then takes a shift and provides a look into the CIA headquarters in the U.S. and how they have been watching Jason the whole time through surveillance camera. The motion blurred background camera shot with Jason walking intensely towards the camera with a gun is known for one of the best effects.
I highly recommend this movie along with the additional Bourne series films. I believe Robert Ebert sums up the movie the best, "The movie is complete as itself. You sit there, and the action assaults you, and using words to re-create it would be futile. What actually happens to Jason Bourne is essentially immaterial. What matters is that something must happen, so he can run away from it or towards it." (Ebert, 2007)