This movie has pulled off a similar pattern to the Pirates Of The Caribbean trilogy. After a fantastic first film, both franchises faltered a bit, then recovered with fantastic third entries. Like Pirates 2, I liked The Bourne Supremacy, but didn’t love it. Doug Limon had stepped down as director after the first (to work on Mr. & Mrs. Smith), and Paul Greengrass stepped in as director. Greengrass uses extremely hand held cinematography for his films, and it was so intrusive in Supremacy that it drove me a bit nuts. While this third film is also directed by Greengrass, and features a similar hand held approach, I found it less distracting and was able to make that the one thing about this movie that I’ll forgive.
Writing: This script must be 85% staging direction and 15% dialog. It’s a well constructed cat-and-mouse game that rarely slows down or lets up, featuring as little dialog as it can. The plot is actually pretty straight forward, and is a good follow-up chapter to what the first two films setup, often times referencing events of those films. The simplicity of the plot works for the movie rather than against it, because we have such a well established character plowing his way through the scenes with style and a fantastic cast bringing it all to life.
Production: Like I already said, this film features more of Greengrass’ shaky-cam style, but it’s not nearly as bad as it was on the previous film. Greengrass directed the stunning United 93 between the second and third Bourne films, and I think he got a better handle on his shaky-cam technique while making United 93. If it were me, I would have toned down the shaky nature of the camera work in both United 93 and this film, but in them I didn’t find the technique distracting enough for me to downgrade my opinion of the film as a result (which I do for the second Bourne film). There’s only a couple scenes in this film where the camera work becomes a real distraction, but I’m always able to write off one detracting aspect of a movie and not hold it against the film - and that would be the thing I’ll write off for this one. The other production aspects of the film are fantastic. The location based filming is a huge benefit to the film, in a day where most films would rather film in sound stages, the heavy amount of international location filming is a real cool aspect of the film. In fact, I’d be surprised to learn that more than a few percent of this film wasn’t filmed on location. The aspects of surveillance and technology in this film are also well grounded in reality (a rarity for the genre). Sound design is pretty slick. The stunt teams pull off some amazing sequences - which again is another very reality-grounded aspect of the production. Then there’s the most impressive technical aspect of this film, the editing. I’ll often notice when a movie has poor editing while I’m watching it, but for me to take notice of how great the editing in a movie is while watching it the first time is a true sign of just how impressed I am with it. With a story that rarely lets up, the editing is a constant challenge, and it’s pulled off with excellent flow and pacing.
Cast: When I saw the first Bourne movie, I was awestruck with just how amazing a job Matt Damon could do with a role like this. And let me put this as simply as I can - he absolutely owns the role in this third film. Damon is a favorite actor of mine, who constantly surprises with just how good he can be in most any role. Jason Bourne is a career defining role for him, and a genre defining performance for the industry. What is most impressive is how well he underplays things. And like the previous films, Damon is surrounded by a number of fantastic actors doing what they do best. Julia Stiles is actually the only other cast member to be featured in all 3 Bourne films. I found her presence in the first two films rather fascinating, because they were curiously on the periphery of the story and were completely downplayed. I wondered if she was there as more of a setup for a future film in the franchise. Her character takes on a bigger part of the story in this film, but continues to be rather downplayed and slightly mysterious. What I love about the character and her performance is how little dialog she has. More times than not, she’ll let a whole scene go by without dialog, using only looks. Stiles does a great job with the role. Joan Allen returns after her appearance in the second film and does a great job again. David Strathaern, a fantastic actor, really makes his aggressive character work. The venerable Albert Finney is a nice fit for his role as an important character of Bourne’s past. Scott Glenn (who’s really looking old these days) slips into a mysterious role of power nicely. The rest of the cast comes through nicely.
Music: I had already built up a great amount of respect for composer John Powell by the time he did the first Bourne film, but it was that first Bourne film that cemented him as one of my absolute favorite composers working in film today. He’s one of the people that equaled their effort on the second Bourne film. Both of them are absolutely brilliant scores. His score for this third entry is certainly up to the task of living up to those previous scores. I’ve been listening to the CD for the score for the last couple days since it was released. While I love the score, I thought it was missing that one defining action cue that the previous two scores had. Sure, it has plenty of great action cues, but not that one that just stands out as stunning. After seeing the movie, I found out why. They tracked in material from those two previous defining cues from the first two scores into the later part of this third film. That’s a forgivable thing for them to do, and the tracked in approach with those two cues works very well where they used them. It’s actually kinda cool to see how big a deal it was for John Powell to land the job of scoring the first Bourne film. Not only is that score used as temp track material for countless movies and TV pilots, but it kicked off a couple significant collaborations. After doing such a fantastic job on that first Bourne score, director Doug Liman brought him with to work on Mr. & Mrs. Smith, for which Powell put together yet another stunning score. And when Paul Greengrass took over on the second Bourne film, Powell did a great job again, causing Greengrass to take him with to do the score for United 93. Powell’s score for United 93, while being a very subued score for most of the film, is absolutely brilliant. I dare say it’s perfect. So his being hired for that first Bourne score really branched out his career nicely. Of course, he returned for this great third Bourne score, but that came as a surprise to basically nobody. It’s interesting to see other directors get so impressed with his work that they take him with to other projects - like Chris Wedge did after working with him on Robots, taking him with to do the second Ice Age movie even though he had originally used composer David Newman on the first Ice Age. I guess he was so impressed with Powell that he wanted him to take over for that second Ice Age film. And rightfully so, since both Robots & Ice Age 2 are great Powell scores. I continue to be impressed with every score John Powell does, and I look forward to many more.
