it's not simply about the shaky camera that's the problem, in this tense but uneasy third Bourne film

Rating: 6/10 (5 August 2007)

The Bourne trilogy has amassed a huge following of fans, particularly, it would seem, for the third film. I was a big fan of the first film, and found the second one- the first from director Paul Greengrass- to also work pretty well under the circumstances of a slightly lesser story. This time, with Ultimatum, it comes as something of a slight disappointment. Certain ingredients are still there and cooking well, such as the spectacularly well choreographed chase through the rooftops and windows of the Morroccan city, leading up to a really intense fight between Bourne and an assassin. As well as this there's some other elements added, like secrets and cover-ups within the NSA and CIA and whatnot, meant to bring up the charge of more to ponder about what is really going on with Bourne's original identity. But somehow it also feels a lot of the time like it hasn't been cooked well enough emotionally, or at least with enough ingenuity between the characters.
Matt Damon said recently in an interview that it was a tough and not very good experience working on the film, aside from other personal pressures in his life, because of the erratic shooting schedule and a lack of cohesive directing from Greengrass (they shot the film, much like POTC: At World's End, without a finished script). It makes some sense then to see why it's not Damon's, or Greengrass's, best work by far, even as both try to do what they can. But the problem with the latter (Damon is just much too two-dimensional, if that, as he doesn't express much more than one or more emotions until his final scene with Albert Finney) is the nature of the shooting to the material. It's not that a shaky hand-held camera is always a negative or a cause for nausea, and in fact Greengrass's own United 93, with it shot mostly in hand-held, worked perfectly with the subject matter. This time however there's a lack of consistency: having it hand-held for every scene, even if it's just a shot of characters looking at documents, becomes rote after a while as opposed to naturalistic.
It doesn't detract terribly from the action sequences, since they're still as in the other films very well choreographed in that non-stop chase kind of mode such as the NY chase scenes (which near the laughable as Damon almost becomes a superhero with the amount of damage he sustains with only, at one point, slightly bruised hands after the fight). But because the material itself has its own problems, such as the sort of typical cover-up plot that unfolds (and as there's some double-back crossing with a couple of other principle characters), the style sometimes gets in the way, as if its compensation to add edginess in close-ups. Then again the shaky-hand-held is almost pleasant when compared to the flashback first-person memory scenes, which are shot mostly as if through the eyes of someone on absinthe. The end results from 'Ultimatum' aren't completely grim, but there's not really too much of the unexpected, or a fully controlled approach to elevate it, even to having two more shots (an underwater moment) that follow what could have been a really terrific final shot. Neither the best nor worst of the summer 07 blockbusters