The Bourne Ultimatum

The verdict: A cracking actioner, requiring just the right amount of suspension of disbelief. The Bourne Ultimatum is that rarest of movie entities: a third instalment that improves on the previous two.

The rating: 8/10

The third instalment of the Bourne trilogy trundles along at such a confident, relentless pace, it would almost be easy to dismiss it as a solid action movie... you know, good popcorn entertainment. Well, I'm happy not to describe Ultimatum only in those terms, simply because it provides an absolutely top night at the flicks.

Be prepared though folks, because this movie is a tale of perpetual motion, right from the off. From the amnesiac hero at it's centre, on the run from the CIA and the NSA, to the hand-held camera style favoured by the movie's director, the now surely A-list Paul Greengrass, everbody in this movie is in a hurry to get about their business. Right from the opening scenes, which pick up as the second movie ended, there is an atmosphere of little time to waste: the dialogue comes thick and fast, and the action, set almost in real time pace, is smart, realistic and adrenaline-fuelled.

This movie follows a similar template to the previous instalment: Bourne is trying to re-discover his identity while being pursued by the CIA, who use cutting edge technology to try and catch up with him before he uncovers a number of dark secrets that their top brass would prefer to keep buried. While Bourne jets from one exotic location to the next, the CIA agents pace up and down in ultra-modern offices, using any means necessary to try and dispose of him, and getting quite irritated with each other as they continually fail to do so. Meanwhile, Bourne must follow a lukewarm trail of limited information from one life-threatening situation to the next, and keep literally just one step ahead of his pursuers all the while.

Matt Damon is convincing, and David Srathairn is excellent as the morally questionable chief investigator. Joan Allen reprises her role as chief pacer in the office, and does have a little more to do in this instalment, but the real star of the movie is the action. The set-pieces never feel overly contrived, as they are all deceptively simple. A few car chases, a chase on foot across rooftops in Tangier, a sniper in Waterloo station, every set-piece is filled with tension, close shaves, and unexpected twists, leaving the audience with just enough time to gasp before the next moment of high drama erupts onto the screen.

The soundtrack pulses with just the right amount of intensity when building tension, but daringly, many of the action sequences occur without any musical backing. When Bourne is fighting hand-to hand, we hear every swipe, every grunt of pain, and every bone crunching hit. When Bourne is in mobile pursuit, we hear tyres screeching, sirens wailing, glass smashing, and shouts of passers by. Overall, the sound in this Bourne movie really is second to none, and heightens the impact of the action scenes.

The dialogue is terse and urgent, and as with the action, there is little waste, with everything happening at real pace. However, there is some depth below the surface in the exchanges we see on screen, with the high-powered executive banter in particular displaying a real wit that you're unlikely to see in many actioners. A moment that sticks in my mind is when David Strathairn's character lambasts Joan Allen for criticising real-time judgements from an armchair, and I interpreted this almost as a challenge from the screen writers to the audience, as if they were saying, go on then, what would you do differently in this situation? Because Bourne generally stays one step ahead, and also because of the pace of the action, we never get the opportunity to poke holes in his decisions, and this is a major strength of the movie.

There are no cheesy one-liners, arched eyebrows, invisible cars or signature theme tune here (unless you count that Moby song.. which I don't). Bourne gets hurt and is regularly in mortal danger, but when he has to fight, he can fight. When he needs to drive, he's as comfortable on a scrambler as in a cop car. He capably speaks foreign languages, he knows how to lose a tail and he uses pay as you go mobile phones to avoid surveillance. Nothing in Bourne is beyond the boundaries of possibility, and that's what pulls you into wanting him to win out in the end.

If this movie is overlooked for Oscar next year, it will be a real crime. Direction, sound and script are top notch here and are the definite stars of the piece. Damon, too though, is understated and quietly effective in the lead role, and Strathairn and Allen have a very watchable sparring relationship, with a real undercurrent of tension (thankfully not of the Unresolved Sexual type).

What more can I say folks, go see it, you'll have a blast. You'll need a little suspension of disbelief, but not much, and for a movie that asks for so little, it delivers in spadeloads. I'm not sure if I want them to make a 'Bourne IV' (the door is left wiide open), but as long as Paul Greengrass continues to make movies of anything approaching this quality, then I'm going to be very happy to keep watching.

The Bourne Supremacy

The verdict: Gritty, action-packed and, unbelievably, it's believable! Bond should look to Bourne for ideas, because this is what a spy thriller should be. Roll on Bourne 3!

The rating: 7/10

I don't know, there just seemed to be no end of fuss and hype about 'Casino Royale'. Fair enough, Daniel Craig delivered a great performance as Bond, and the script and action were the best we've seen from the franchise in years, but when you watch 'The Bourne Supremacy', you begin to realise the failings of the british franchise. The problem with Bond, as Daniel Craig found out so viscerally, is all the bloody baggage that comes with it. Everybody has expectations of who Bond should be, what he should say, what fecking car he should drive.. For film-makers to take on the Bond franchise, they have the weight of expectation around this larger than life character that has an off-screen identity all his own.

Bourne has no such baggage. The first movie was a pacy actioner in which Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) awakes from a spell of amnesia to find that he's a highly trained super-spy, and his life is in danger. Instantly, the rules of the game become fluid. We aren't sure what to expect from Bourne because he doesn't know what's going to happen next himself.

The first movie, with its understated and dangerous hero, managed to relaunch the flagging career of Matt Damon, and luckily there were two more Robert Ludlum books to mine for sequel material. Now, of course we have the franchise, with the third movie 'The Bourne Ultimatum' due out this summer, and featuring Paddy Considine in a lead role, good work, fella!

In an inspired piece of delegation for this, the second episode, the reins were handed to United 93's helmsman Paul Greengrass, and this has injected a dose of grittier, more realistic action to proceedings. Bourne has no catchphrase, and there are no invisible cars on show in this spy thriller.

Right from the opening moments, 'The Bourne Supremacy' sets the ball rolling for a fraught, tense and realistic thriller that is definitely worth the admission price. Greengrass brings an immediacy to proceedings, and the action moves at a real-time pace, with Bourne literally living moment to moment, but always a pace or two ahead of his pursuers.

The supporting cast adds the required level of gravitas to proceedings, with Brian Cox delivering a pretty good turn as the veteran of operation Treadstone, Bourne's training mission. Julia Stiles also shows up, and has a nice few scenes with Damon, where she genuinely looks like she's fearing for her life. Bless.

Crucial to your enjoyment of a movie like this though, is whether you can believe what's unfolding in front of you. To his credit, Greengrass manages the pace of the action very well, and although at times events happen very quickly, the movie never gets ahead of itself. When gadgets are employed, they are sufficiently low-tech in appearance, portable, and conspicuously free of brand names to make them look like they might actually do what Bourne is trying to make them do. One criticism might be that even in the quieter moments of the movie, his characteristic jerky hand-held camera style seems a little at odds with what's happening on screen, but this is a small quibble compared to the positives.

Damon is convincing as the amnesiac hero, and has sufficiently increased in bulk to make you believe he's hold his own in a ruck with a russian mole, or whatever. As I said previously though, Greengrass has foregone the dry cool wit of the action hero, so Damon has no killer line to speak of, of the "Bourne, Jason Bourne" variety. (How about: "I'm Bourne. You're dead." Eh? ... No?... - Ed).. However, given the situations he's dealing with, you'd forgive him for not having the time to throw a witty remark over his shoulder..

I have to say, I was impressed with this one, and am now really looking forward to the third instalment, which will also be direted by Greengrass. In any case, this one is well worth a look on Dvd if you missed it in the flicks...

United 93

The verdict: Gripping, relentless and incredibly moving account of an historic event that places you right there in real time as it unfolds. Not to be missed.

The rating: 8/10

There are certain subjects that make you wonder, is this really fodder for entertainment? I recall a time during a summer spent working in Germany, when myself and some friends visited Dachau, one of the largest concentration camps of the second world war. The camp itself is preserved on the outskirts of Dachau village, which happens to be a pleasant, sleepy commuter town on the outskirts of Munich's suburbs. The camp, however, is obviously a different story. After watching a thirty minute film about what the horrors that occurred at Dachau during the war years, we were plunged from the comforting safety of the small cinema, into the actual camp we had just seen on screen. We wandered around the grounds of the camp for around an hour, with the ghosts of the film we had just seen still running through our minds as we moved silently through buildings, dormitories, showers... I'm not sure how to describe just how devastating that experience was, but ultimately it was a formative one, and hugely worthwhile.

Afterwards though, I struggled to describe to people why they should go to visit Dachau, given we are so used to describing experiences in terms of straight-forward positives. But "you should go, it's great" isn't really a great way to prepare someone for this kind of experience, or the kind of emotional impact that such an experience provokes.

Paul Greengrass knows this type of subject, and this type of subject matter all too well. His first major film success came with the gritty, realistic 'Bloody Sunday', a story set against the backdrop of one of the most bitterly remembered days in the history of the Northern Ireland troubles.

Bloody Sunday won Greengrass much critical acclaim, not only for it's mature treatment of the emotionally fraught and complex subject matter, but also for the level of realism that he brought to the finished movie, with natural dialogue and shaky hand-held cameras compounding the feeling of actually being there with these characters on that day. This style translated well to more standard Hollywood fare for Greengrass, when he helmed the successful Bourne sequel 'The Bourne Supremacy'.

I have to be honest though folks, when I first heard about United 93, I wasn't all that keen. Given that it was a little soon, and there was the possibility of exploiting the story of 9/11, I wasn't exactly in a rush out to get out to see it. I mean, it tells the story of the September 11th hi-jacks, where the passengers of United flight 93 usurp control of their flight from the hijackers, and ensure that the terrorists' target is missed, but at the ultimate cost to themselves. So... let's just say it's not exactly date movie material.

However in reality, United 93 is an excellent re-telling of the events of that most memorable of days in recent world history, but from the points of view of the main protagonists in the events. Not only the passengers, crew and hi-jackers of United 93, but also the air traffic controllers in New York and Boston who are attempting to comprehend events as they unfold and return some sort of order, and also the military men, whose influence over events was actually very limited relative to the air traffic control centers.

When a story such as this is on the news, it's relatively easy to switch off, to perhaps shed a quick tear for the victims, and then switch over to a good comedy, and quickly put that dark story out of your mind. What Greengrass' movie does so effectively is viscerally put you through the experience of that day. As the passengers of United 93 fasten their seat-belts on screen, the audience should also strap themselves in for the ride, because the hour and three-quarters to follow are going to be a relentless, emotionally draining, but ultimately worthwhile experience.

I'm struggling to find the correct terms in which to recommend United 93, but let me be clear folks, this is not 'Blades of Glory'. For two hours, you will be right there on September the 11th, and for some, this will be too much to handle. However, the manner in which the film is made, the level of research and attention to detail, and the pure tension of the movie, make this deserving of your time. This is not exploitation of human tragedy, far from it. What United 93 does is honour the memories of real people who paid the ultimate cost to prevent what may have been another disaster on the scale of the Twin Towers. In the same way as Dachau, this monument should remain standing, and it deserves to be visited.