Overdone, anyone?

Rating: 6/10 (3 August 2007)

I went to see this movie at 12:01 on Firday morning; the earliest showing on the first day of its release. I absolutely loved the first and second movies, and was in such great anticipation of this third installment that I believed that the movie would do nothing but exceed my high expectations of it. This was partly because of the return of Paul Greengrass (the talented director of the kinetic and well-paced Bourne Supremacy) and partly because, hell, I wanted to see more of the clever and quasi-realistic action that had been initialized by the first movie and faithfully perpetuated by the second. Why should I think 'Ultimatum' would be any different? After seeing it, I still can't answer that question. Yes, there were still a few of the Macgyver-esquire clever moments, and blistering chase scenes, and plenty of bad guys getting the pudding beaten out of them, but it all just seemed so campy compared to the judicial placement of sequences like these in the previous installments. I think it will suffice to say that I didn't like the camera. Whatever effect Greengrass's choppy editing and washed-out color scheme did for the second movie, it was hugely overdone in 'Ultimatum'. What's the point of having a fight scene if the audience can't see what's going on? Instead of a clear view of the fight, the audience is strangely forced to focus on Matt Damon's left eyebrow, and the existence of loud punching noises. I also hated the potential love interest of *secret mystery character*. It was poorly placed, and a little contrive: there had been absolutely no reference, not even a hinting at the existence of such attractions in the previous films. Moments like this abound throughout the movie; inexplicable, arbitrary revelations and the convenient acquiring of crucial information take place, it seems, just for the sake of moving the movie along with little regard to adequate explanation. Furthermore, cheesy one-liners which, I'm happy to say, were absent from the first two movies, seemed to run obtusely against the grain of the established seriousness of the genre. Moments like the return of the quote first uttered by a dying assassin in the first movie could have been kinda cool, if they didn't play on the overdone and campy aspects of the movie. All of this, in conjunction with a flashback scene taken, it seems, straight out of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith (you'll see the connection) and a terrible attempt at integrating music from a British punk band covering the original "Extreme Ways" by Moby into the end credits, seem to drown out the admirable struggle of Matt Damon to keep Jason Bourne as badass as he always was. It's possible that my expectations of this movie were simply too high to be satisfied, but I just can't help but think that the given formula of the other films offered Greengrass plenty to work with without him marring this one with kitsch and convenience.