profound.

Rating: 9/10 (12 August 2007)

Warning: spoilers ahead!
Make no mistake: I love the Bourne series. In the past, I have explained my love for these movies with the fact that the protagonist is attractive, brilliant, and always winning. The third film lived up to the legacy set by the first two, which surprised me, as trilogies are rarely so consistent. Even more, however, I found this film to be the most overtly philosophical and even theological of the three; the depth of film, combined with the superficial reasons I so deeply enjoyed the first two, make it the best of the three in my book.
The themes of identity, vengeance, and atonement have pervaded the series; the third film was no exception, but never have these themes been so clear. Bourne is on a mission to avenge the death of Marie, but that same mission answers very fundamental questions of who he is and how he came to be. The more he learns about himself, the more he despises himself; he remembers killing people and feels tremendous guilt, but he has no idea why he did these things. In a scene with Nikki, he tersely discusses how he has tried to do everything he can to atone for his wrongs and find that he cannot. Only by getting back to his beginnings as Jason Bourne can he understand why he is the way he is, why he's done the things he's done, and only after this can he put an end to Jason Bourne and find freedom and redemption.
Interestingly, I found remarkable parallels between this film and the picture of humanity espoused by Christianity. Man is trapped in a life of doing wrong and feels the weight of these wrongs; he tries to atone for them, but he cannot. Only by getting back to his creator can he understand how he came to be, and only then can the self that he despises be put to death and new life and redemption be found. I found these similarities to be striking and thought-provoking, and I thought that Greengrass made an interesting commentary about human nature in the process. It was a brilliant way to end the series, if this is the end (though the box-office gross may suggest otherwise), tying together very profound questions about identity and vengeance with the same finesse of the first two films.