The Dregs.

Rating: 2/10 (6 September 2008)

Great cast -- Matt Damon, Scott Glenn, Joan Allen, David Strathairn -- wasted in this commercial piece of egregious offal.
The original in this franchise, "The Bourne Identity", was a fascinating and brutal action movie with a genuine engine behind the plot. Just who IS Jason Bourne? Well, as it turns out, Bourne (Damon) is a failed CIA assassin who, having failed in an illegal enterprise and having become an amnesic, is a loose cannon that the CIA must destroy. (It's not the CIA, of course. It's some internal cabal. It's the INS or the IRS or the ABC or CNN or STD.) Lots of high-tech stuff and a good deal of splendidly realized action. Damon not only escapes from the agents of his former employer, he solves the question that has driven him.
The sequel, "The Bourne Supremacy", was a partial-birth abortion not only written to cash in on the commercial success of the original but directed in an unspeakably ill-conceived manner.
This one is, if possible, worse than the previous installment. The MGM is still trying to kill Matt Damon but for no good reason. "As far as I'm concerned, he's still a risk," intones Scott Glenn, bad guy. There have been a hundred movies in the past two decades in which an entire regiment of evildoers pursues one action superhero who outwits and out-muscles them at every turn. Everybody has seen one or another version of "Rambo".
This is an insult to the presumed intelligence of the American people. Near the beginning, there is a wide-angled aerial shot of the Arch of Triumph in the center of Paris, one of the city's three or four immediately recognizable landmarks. Then a caption inform us of the location -- "Paris." Not only that, but "Paris, France." Just so you don't get confused and think it's a postcard of Paris, New Jersey, or Las Vegas (NEVADA).
There is a superabundance of action. People beat the crap out of one another. If that's what you're looking for, you'll find it here, pointless though it is. The score, however, is a copy of the effective original.
I can't for the life of me understand why the director decided to follow the model set by the sequel, instead of that of the original, which was better in all respects.
Every shot in "The Bourne Ultimatum" seems to use a hand-held camera. And the camera wobbles all over the place as if held by a man suffering from a volcanic hangover. When Bourne first meets a possible friend in a café, near the opening, the shots are done in reverse angle, meaning when Damon speaks we watch him over the other guy's shoulder, and when the other guy speaks we look over Damon's shoulder. But here the camera roves and meanders. I've seen more professional camera work in home videos by high school kids. At one point the image of the other speakers blocks out all of Damon's face but his nose and mouth. In a later shot, the camera sinks so low and moves so excessively laterally that, instead of an over-the-shoulder shot, the image we see is a behind-the-neck shot because Damon's face is entirely obscured. Let me repeat that. A conversation is taking place between two men and the screen is filled with the shivering image of the back of one of their heads. I mean that literally.
I couldn't finish watching this. I was in fear for the well-being of my visual cortex, not to mention my frontal lobes. But the user ratings are high enough to suggest that this is satisfying somebody's appetite for something. I won't try to guess what appetite that is, but can I ask one question? Guys, did you see the original? You know, "The Bourne Identity"?