Films

The Bourne Ultimatum (2007)
[2nd watch]

Here we go, then: the most uber-praised of all the Bourne movies, which I haven't seen since it reached DVD in late 2007.

And I still think it's overrated.

Really, I'm talking relative to the other two films. In and of itself, it's a great action-thriller, rattling along with both story and action, pushing boundaries in entertaining fashion. But it feels like the series is retreading old ground -- oh look, another shady CIA conspiracy, even higher up than the last two! And oh look, a twist where an agent who seemed newly assigned actually had an ulterior motive to be after Bourne all along! And so on.

And then there's the final act, which feels like too pat a conclusion. Bourne finds out everything (including stuff I'm sure we'd well guessed); all sorts of stuff gets publicly exposed and people are brought to justice; etc etc.

There are some great sequences along the way -- the Waterloo bit is amongst the series' very finest, the New York car chase rivals Supremacy's (though I still think Identity's Mini tops both), and the Tangier sequence, while being thoroughly silly (how the hell can all these people chase each other across all those rooftops and tiny side streets?), is still pretty great.

But overall, I find it slightly less enjoyable than the previous two... though if Identity is 5/5, perhaps Supremacy is 4.9/5 and Ultimatum is 4.8/5. Something like that.