The Bourne Ultimatum (film)

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The Bourne Ultimatum
Theatrical poster
Directed by	Paul Greengrass
Produced by	Patrick Crowley Frank Marshall
Written by	Screenplay: Tony Gilroy Scott Z. Burns George Nolfi Uncredited: Tom Stoppard Story: Tony Gilroy Novel: Robert Ludlum
Starring	Matt Damon Julia Stiles David Strathairn Scott Glenn Paddy Considine Edgar Ramirez with Albert Finney and Joan Allen
Music by	John Powell
Cinematography	Oliver Wood
Editing by	Christopher Rouse
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	United States: August 3, 2007 United Kingdom: August 16, 2007
Running time	115 min
Country	United States United Kingdom
Language	English French Russian Arabic Spanish
Budget	$110 million
Gross revenue	$442,911,572 (worldwide)
Preceded by	The Bourne Supremacy
Followed by	Bourne 4

The Bourne Ultimatum is a 2007 spy film directed by Paul Greengrass and loosely based^[1] on the Robert Ludlum novel of the same name. The film is a sequel to The Bourne Supremacy and the third film of the Bourne Series. It stars Matt Damon reprising his role as Ludlum's signature character, amnesiac CIA assassin Jason Bourne. The film continues the saga of Jason Bourne as he escapes from authorities in Moscow, Russia, and follows the character as he travels to Paris, London, Madrid, Tangier, and New York City to uncover his real identity, while the CIA continues to send assassins after him. The film co-starred Julia Stiles, David Strathairn, Scott Glenn, Paddy Considine, Edgar Ramirez, Albert Finney, and Joan Allen. The script was by Tony Gilroy, Scott Z. Burns, George Nolfi, and an uncredited Tom Stoppard.^[2] The producers were Patrick Crowley, Frank Marshall, Paul L. Sandberg, and Doug Liman, who directed the first Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity.

The Bourne Ultimatum was produced by Universal Pictures and was released on August 3, 2007 in North America, where it grossed $69.3 million in ticket sales in its first weekend of release, making it the highest August opening in the U.S.^[3] Although all three films have been commercially successful and critically acclaimed, The Bourne Ultimatum is the only film in the trilogy to have been nominated for an Academy Award, winning all three of its nominations for Best Film Editing, Best Sound, and Best Sound Editing at the 80th Academy Awards.

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Production 3.1 References to previous films 3.1.1 Within the series 3.1.2 Outside of the series 4 Music 5 Release 6 Reception 6.1 Top ten lists 6.2 Academy Awards 6.3 Other awards 7 Sequel 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Plot

The movie begins before the end of the events in The Bourne Supremacy, as Bourne, wounded by a gunshot from the Russian assassin Kirill, is still evading the Moscow police. He escapes.

Six weeks later, Simon Ross, a security correspondent for The Guardian, meets with someone in Turin, to discuss Treadstone. Bourne meets Ross at Waterloo Station in London after having read Ross' article in The Guardian by Ross that went into detail about Bourne, Treadstone, and "Operation Blackbriar." As Ross is told by Bourne to meet him at London Waterloo station in London, CIA officer Noah Vosen orders Paz, an assassin, to go after Ross, but intervention by Bourne stops that. Thinking that Bourne is the source, Vosen orders Paz to kill both Bourne and Ross, and in a moment of panic, Ross runs into view of Paz's sniper rifle and is shot dead. In the ensuing chaos, Bourne slips in unnoticed and takes Ross' notes and discovers that his source for the article was Neal Daniels, the Madrid CIA station chief.

The CIA also discovers that Ross' source was Daniels and sends a team out to raid his office. Bourne arrives first and finds nothing, as Daniels has already left. He subdues the CIA team as they storm the office. Nicky Parsons then arrives, and she gives the all-clear to Vosen and Deputy Director Pamela Landy, giving both her and Bourne time to escape, whilst the second team meant to arrest Bourne is captured by Spanish police. Parsons tells Bourne that Daniels is in Tangier and the two of them take the ferry to the Moroccan port. On arrival, Parsons logs in and finds the CIA has assigned Desh Bouksani to assassinate Daniels. Desh is given further orders to kill Parsons after Daniels. Bourne attempts to stop Desh, but Desh successfully detonates a bomb that kills Daniels. As Desh attempts to kill Parsons, Bourne attacks and strangles him after a long and brutal fight. Bourne has Parsons dye and cut her hair (much as he did with Marie) and puts her on a bus to escape.

At the Tangier morgue, Bourne examines Daniels' charred papers and finds the address of the CIA substation in New York City. Bourne takes a flight to New York City and calls Deputy Director Pamela Landy from a building across the street (recreating the final scene from the Bourne Supremacy). Landy begins walking outside and Bourne texts her to meet at a certain place, knowing the CIA is monitoring the communication. As the teams and Vosen converge on Landy's position, Bourne breaks into Vosen's office and steals classified Blackbriar documents. Bourne then engages in a car chase around New York with CIA agents and escapes.

Landy and Bourne meet at the Treadstone R&D facility. Landy begins faxing the documents to an unknown receiver while Bourne goes downstairs to find his past. He meets Dr. Albert Hirsch, who ran Treadstone's psychological conditioning program. Bourne was their first experimental conditioning subject. With Hirsch's help, Bourne remembers that he volunteered for the program and killed a man in the same room. CIA agents then break in and start shooting. Bourne escapes and jumps into the East River as Vosen tries to shoot him.

The final scenes of the movie alternatively show Bourne's body and TV news reports that Vosen and Hirsch have been arrested and the United States Senate is holding a hearing regarding the Blackbriar operation. The final news item reports that David Webb, alias Jason Bourne, was shot and fell in the East River but his body has not been found. At this point, Bourne's body springs to life and starts swimming away.

[edit] Cast

• Matt Damon as Jason Bourne (Captain David Webb): an amnesiac assassin formerly based in Paris. The protagonist.
• Julia Stiles as Nicky Parsons: formerly Bourne's Treadstone contact in Paris, she was assigned to Madrid after attempts to capture Bourne in Berlin and Russia failed. She is the only character besides Bourne to appear in all three films.
• David Strathairn as Noah Vosen: CIA Deputy Director, head of Operation Blackbriar, a renamed and upgraded Operation Treadstone.
• Joan Allen as Pamela Landy: a CIA Deputy Director, Landy is working with Vosen to track and capture Bourne.
• Paddy Considine as Simon Ross: a British journalist of the newspaper The Guardian who has been uncovering the secrets behind the origin of Operation Treadstone, and Bourne's past.
• Albert Finney as Dr. Albert Hirsch: the CIA specialist who supervised Bourne's behavior modification training prior to Operation Treadstone.
• Scott Glenn as Ezra Kramer: Director of the CIA.
• Colin Stinton as Neal Daniels: CIA Station Chief in Madrid.
• Joey Ansah as Desh: a Blackbriar assassin out of Casablanca, sent to Tangier to take out Neal Daniels.
• Edgar Ramirez as Paz: a Blackbriar assassin out of Naples, sent to London to take out Simon Ross.
• Tom Gallop as Tom Cronin: Pamela Landy's assistant.
• Corey Johnson as Ray Wills: Vosen's deputy at Operation Blackbriar.
• Franka Potente as Marie Helena Kreutz.
• Daniel Brühl as Martin Kreutz: Marie's half brother.
• Sam Dang as Raymond Sykes: Field agent attached to Vosen.
• Scott Adkins as Agent Kiley (Credited as Scott Atkin)

[edit] Production

The Bourne Ultimatum was filmed at the Pinewood Studios in London and in multiple locations around the world, including Tangier, London, Paris, Madrid (as itself and double for Turin), Berlin (as double for Moscow), New York City, and other locations in the U.S.^[4]

[edit] References to previous films

[edit] Within the series

In the audio commentary for the current DVD release of The Bourne Ultimatum, director Paul Greengrass confirmed the following scenes were deliberate allusions to scenes from the previous installments of the Bourne film franchise.^[5] They include:

• The opening chase sequence of The Bourne Ultimatum is a continuation of the Russian police attempts to capture Bourne in Moscow near the end of The Bourne Supremacy and takes place before Bourne's apology to Neski's daughter in the previous film.
• The scene where Bourne tells Martin of his sister Marie's death is very similar to the ending of The Bourne Supremacy, when Bourne apologizes to the Neskis' daughter for killing her parents.
• The scene where Bourne crashes through a window to attack Desh is similar to the scene where Castel attacked Bourne in The Bourne Identity.
• After Bourne tells Nicky she will have to run, Nicky dyes and cuts her hair, similar to the scene in The Bourne Identity with Marie dyeing and cutting her hair.
• During the car chase with Paz, Bourne's car is destroyed in a similar fashion to Kirill's in the climax of The Bourne Supremacy. The sequence also includes similar staging, such as Bourne walking up to Paz with gun in hand but deciding not to shoot.
• In the rooftop climax, Bourne tells Paz, "Look at us. Look at what they make you give," reiterating the dying words of The Professor (Clive Owen) in The Bourne Identity.
• The scene at the end of The Bourne Supremacy in which Bourne tells Landy she looks tired is in The Bourne Ultimatum when he arrives in New York.
• The ending of The Bourne Ultimatum, with Bourne floating motionless in the East River, echoes the opening scene of The Bourne Identity, which utilizes a similar image. The music in both scenes is also repeated.

[edit] Outside of the series

• The scene featuring Bourne desperately trying to catch a glimpse of Paz in the London Underground after Ross is gunned down is, according to Greengrass, a "wink" to the New York City Subway chase in one of his favorite films, The French Connection.^[6]
• The explosion scene set in Tangiers echo the famous "cafe" explosion scene from the film The Battle of Algiers.
• The rooftop chase scene in Tangier bears a strong resemblance to a scene in the 1987 Bond film The Living Daylights in which James Bond is also involved in a chase across the rooftops of Tangier.

[edit] Music

As with the previous films in the trilogy, the score was composed by John Powell. A new version of Moby's "Extreme Ways", entitled "Extreme Ways (Bourne's Ultimatum)", was recorded for the film's end credits.

[edit] Release

• Benefit premiere — A premiere of The Bourne Ultimatum was held in downtown Oklahoma City on July 31, 2007, at Harkins Bricktown Theaters^[7] to benefit The Children's Center, located in suburban Bethany. The film was shown simultaneously on three screens. Matt Damon was at the event to greet guests.
• UK premiere — The film premiered at Leicester Square in London on August 15, 2007, with Matt Damon, Julia Stiles and Joan Allen attending. The film was released the next day.^[8]
• Australian premiere — The film premiered in Sydney on August 8, 2007, at the State Theatre, with Matt Damon attending. The Bourne Ultimatum was released nationwide on August 30, 2007.^[9]
• Home Video Release — The film was released on both DVD and HD DVD Combo Format on December 11, 2007 in North America.^[10] The DVD was released in both Fullscreen and 2.35:1 Widescreen aspect ratios. The HD DVD and DVD special features^[11] includes several deleted scenes, featurettes, audio commentary, and exclusively on the HD DVD version, HDi Interactive Format features such as Picture-in-Picture Video Commentary.
  In addition to the stand alone DVD release, there is a limited edition 'The Jason Bourne Collection' gift set, featuring all three films on DVD and a bonus disc with a myriad of bonus features such as deleted scenes and featurettes. The gift set features Swiss Bank safe deposit box packaging including foreign currency and a Jason Bourne passport.^[12][13]
  The film and special features on the HD DVD version are presented in 2:35:1 Widescreen high definition 1080p and offer Dolby TrueHD 5.1 lossless and Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio options.^[11]

[edit] Reception

The Bourne Ultimatum earned $69.3 million during its opening weekend at the box office, a record for a single opening in August^[14] and $441.2 million worldwide as of December 14, 2007.^[15] As of March 2009, the film garners a 93% "Certified Fresh" rating (203 positive out of 218 reviews total) at Rotten Tomatoes,^[14] higher than either predecessor.^[16][17] The film had a rating of 85/100 on Metacritic, again higher than the first two films.^[18] At the end of its theatrical release, the film grossed at total of $227,471,070 in the U.S., making it the highest grossing film in the series.

Like its predecessor, The Bourne Supremacy, the film was criticized for its shaky camera work, as Richard Corliss of Time magazine, in an otherwise positive review, wondered "why, in the chat scenes, the camera is afflicted with Parkinson's? The film frame trembles, obscures the speaker with the listener's shoulder, annoys viewers and distracts them from the content of the scene."^[19]

In the British press, the inclusion of a fictional journalist from the real British paper The Guardian and scenes set in the United Kingdom (particularly Waterloo railway station) were commented upon. In particular, that newspaper's reviewer noted that "dodging bullets from a CIA sniper... is the sort of thing which happens to us Guardian journalists all the time."^{[20][21][22][23]}

[edit] Top ten lists

The film appeared on several critics' top ten lists of the best films of 2007.^[24]

• 1st — Empire
• 1st — Best Action/Adventure, Rotten Tomatoes^[25]
• 2nd — Claudia Puig, USA Today
• 2nd — Steven Rea, The Philadelphia Inquirer
• 2nd — Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out New York
• 9th — Rene Rodriguez, The Miami Herald
• 10th — Christy Lemire, Associated Press.^[26]

[edit] Academy Awards

The film won Academy Awards in all three (second highest number of awards at the ceremony behind No Country for Old Men) of its nominations at the 80th Academy Awards:

• Christopher Rouse for Best Film Editing
• Scott Millan, David Parker and Kirk Francis for Best Sound
• Karen M. Baker and Per Hallberg for Best Sound Editing

[edit] Other awards

• ITV3 Crime Thriller Award for Film of the Year, 2008^[27]

[edit] Sequel

In May 2007, prior to the release of Bourne Ultimatum, Matt Damon claimed that he would not be interested in returning for a fourth Bourne film, stating (of his participation in the Bourne franchise): "We have ridden that horse as far as we can."^[28] Damon even said in an interview on The Daily Show that director Paul Greengrass joked that a fourth film could be titled "The Bourne Redundancy."^[29] Nonetheless, the financial and critical success of Bourne Ultimatum has led to speculation in several magazines and Internet forums that another Bourne film might be produced. On February 22, 2008, Variety reported that a fourth film was indeed in the works, with both Damon and Greengrass on board.^[30]

This was confirmed on June 25, 2008, by producers Frank Marshall and Pat Crowley in an interview with IESB.net. Marshall said "Hopefully they will be shooting [in the summer of 2010] for a release in 2011 and our favorite anti-hero is apparently headed to South America."^[31] On October 16, 2008, it was announced that George Nolfi would write the script, with Frank Marshall producing, and Jeffrey Weiner and Henry Morrison executive producing. Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, and Paul Greengrass are also attached to the film.^[32][33][34]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: The Bourne Ultimatum

• Official website
• The Bourne Ultimatum at Allmovie
• The Bourne Ultimatum at the Internet Movie Database
• The Bourne Ultimatum at Rotten Tomatoes
• The Bourne Ultimatum at Metacritic
• The Bourne Ultimatum at Box Office Mojo
• The Bourne Ultimatum red carpet video interview
• The Bourne Portal on UGO.com

Preceded by The Simpsons Movie	Box office number-one films of 2007 (USA) August 5	Succeeded by Rush Hour 3
Preceded by Rush Hour 3	Box office number-one films of 2007 (UK) August 19 - September 2	Succeeded by Run Fatboy Run

v • d • e Jason Bourne Robert Ludlum novels The Bourne Identity (1980) · The Bourne Supremacy (1986) · The Bourne Ultimatum (1990) Eric Van Lustbader novels The Bourne Legacy (2004) · The Bourne Betrayal (2007) · The Bourne Sanction (2008) · The Bourne Deception (2009) TV film The Bourne Identity (1988) Film series The Bourne Identity (2002) · The Bourne Supremacy (2004) · The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) Video games The Bourne Conspiracy (2008)

v • d • e Films directed by Paul Greengrass Resurrected (1989) • The Theory of Flight (1998) • Bloody Sunday (2002) • The Bourne Supremacy (2004) • United 93 (2006) • The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) • Green Zone (2009)

v • d • e Tony Gilroy As a Director Michael Clayton (2007) • Duplicity (2009) As a Screenwriter The Cutting Edge (1992) • Dolores Claiborne (1995) • Extreme Measures (1996) • The Devil's Advocate (with Jonathan Lemkin) (1997) • Bait (with Andrew Scheinman and Adam Scheinman) (2000) • Proof of Life (2000) • The Bourne Identity (with William Blake Herron) (2002) • The Bourne Supremacy (2004) • The Bourne Ultimatum (with Scott Z. Burns and George Nolfi) (2007) • Michael Clayton (2007) • State of Play (with Matthew Michael Carnahan and Billy Ray) (2009) • Duplicity (2009)