Excellent, but something missing

Rating: 8/10 (3 August 2007)

Don't get me wrong. Ultimatum is far-and-away a worthy successor to the previous two films. There are many "hell yeah" moments for the audience, and there is even an action sequence that was so glorious it made me want to cry: Jason Bourne steals a police cruiser while being chased by black CIA cars, and then proceeds to ram his way through downtown NYC traffic in it. It brought back all my wonderful memories of epic car chases from Grand Theft Auto III.
But still, something seemed missing from this film.
The lead characters to me seemed to acted too dryly. David Strathairn is too much of a cookie-cutter bad CIA guy. There's a couple of times when his delivery just seemed too contrived, as if over-rehearsed. As for Damon, Jason Bourne never even cracks a smile, or seems to have any sexuality to him, even when a hot chick is caressing his hand after he just kicked someone's ass. I mean, come on dude. They could've at least made out. It wouldn't have made the movie cheesy. Matt Damon just seemed stuck in one emotional gear through the whole movie, with the occasional Captain Kirk "ahhhrgh" flashback moment. The sense of real anger that drove him in the second film seemed replaced by a robotic feeling of, "I must learn my past," which just seems hard to identify with.
Julia Stiles also seems out of her league in this role... her face, too babyish and expressionless. Where is the next Sigourney Weaver or Meryl Streep for a role like this? Some actress with a taut, wiry bevy of expressions, and a convincing look of real mortal fear? I kept getting the feeling Julia Stiles was on her way to Starbucks and had to pee, not that she was being chased by a trained hit-man through the convoluted streets of an Arab town.
All-in-all, the acting kind of reminded me of Star Wars Episode I, although without a Jar Jar to utterly ruin it, of course. My guess is that the director was too strict and left the cast thinking, "I better not even bob my head too emotionally" -- which they seemed to try and make up for by not using any tripods when shooting facial close-ups (you know, that close shot where the camera intentionally wiggles around to give the shot a tenser, more real feel). Thankfully, these dry performances really didn't seem too out-of-place or unexpected here, since it's not too far off from the previous titles. And it by no means ruins the film, but it did take it down a notch or two from "almost perfect" to just "pretty damn good."
And partly, Ultimatum just seems less realistic than the other two. Sure, it's a Hollywood action movie. But the one thing I loved about the previous two were their lo-fi, gritty, realistic approach. Ultimatum stays mostly true to this, but some of the stunts were maybe a bit overdone. For example, at the end of that epic car chase, Bourne's vehicle gets rammed into the barrier of a highway underpass at what looks like about 50 MPH. It looked like the kind of wreck nobody would walk away from without a broken neck, except maybe Wolverine. Or, apparently, Jason Bourne. Just a BIT unrealistic? And then there were the dozen or so glass windows that he jumps through without a major cut of any kind. What is this guy, the Terminator? I kept waiting for him to rip the flesh off his right arm and reveal the TRUE nature of Treadstone!
That said, this was still a far more realistic actioner than Die Hard 4.0, or the most recent Bond flick, and everyone should go see it :D There is a lot to love about this film. The hand-to-hand combat sequences are fantastic. The chase sequences are great. It's not too long. And I'm looking forward to the next sequel, The Bourne Revelation: Judgment Day, where Matt Damon fights against his evil counterpart, the B-1000...