Bourne Ultimatum

Jana and I completed the Bourne trilogy last night with a viewing of The Bourne Ultimatum. Will asked for my thoughts after seeing it, so here goes:

1. While all three were good movies, we liked Identity the best. The plot was the most clearly focused and easiest to connect with.

2. It was funny that a journalist was at the center of the early drama. Also funny that he was a bumbling idiot in the face of a tense situation.

3. Will, did you see the movie in the theater or on DVD? On the DVD, there's a deleted scene where Pam Landy (Joan Allen's character) is fired or demoted and she's cleaning out her office. Why would they have filmed such a scene in the first place? She was too central to the entire plot.

4. We liked the way the scene that ended Supremacy (Bourne talking to Landy while watching her) actually took place about two-thirds of the way into Ultimatum, reminded me a little of that Godfather flashback scene where Michael tells the family that he's enlisting in the Army.

5. Julia Stiles remained useless. Why would her character help Bourne? This part was not well-developed, and there was time to do it. Thankfully there was no hard-to-believe love connection between the two.

6. This one is bugging me: when Bourne is in Vosen's office stealing the files from his safe, why would he tell Vosen while they're talking on the phone? It was the kind of arrogant movie cliche that a disciplined assassin like Bourne wouldn't fall into.

7. These minor criticisms aside, we really enjoyed the movies. It's really fun to see a person/character perform as exceptionally as Bourne does, whether it's fighting, planning, driving, guiding someone else through danger. You'd like to think that if you ever encountered such a tense situation you would respond with the same clear-eyed precision, but you probably wouldn't.

The ending leaves open the possibility of another sequel, which we will definitely see. Here' hoping Bourne finds out Nicky Parsons is responsible for steering him into the program in the first place and exacts his revenge.