The Bourne Ultimatum

[Dick Splash]

Brace yourself boys and girls.......the third and final film in the errrrrrrr...trilogy.....is upon us. The 3rd of August to be precise. There's been a complex car chase sequence filmed in New York in March which you can see on 'You Tube'. That plus Bruce's 'Live Free Or Die Hard' makes for a 'gunzablazin' summer.

DS

[IamJAFO]

Brace yourself boys and girls.......the third and final film in the errrrrrrr...trilogy.....is upon us. The 3rd of August to be precise. There's been a complex car chase sequence filmed in New York in March which you can see on 'You Tube'. That plus Bruce's 'Live Free Or Die Hard' makes for a 'gunzablazin' summer.

DS

one of my buddies at work told me that Matt Damon and the film crew were in DC around January/February filming some of the scenes.

-IamJAFO

[Deadpreacher]

This is great! I finaly just got my GF to watch the first two and i started telling her that there was ment to be a 3rd. I haven't heard nothing in such a long time i started to believe it was never going to happen. Glad to see i was wrong!

By the way she loved the first two.

[Dick Splash]

TRAILER....................

Check out the very end where he jumps off a roof and into a building and the camera seems to follow behind him...... . Superb direction by Paul Greengrass again.

Quote - Pamela Landy

"Do you have you any idea who you're dealing with?.....................Sit down, strap in and turn on all you've got..............................this is Jason Bourne"

Official Site

There's some other big films this year too;

Die Hard

The Kingdom out in September and co-produced by Michael Mann.

War Inc. with John Cusack [Think Grosse Point Blank 2]

Spiderman

Oh!.....and do watch 'Hot Fuzz' if you get a chance......it's a laugh.

DS

[Dick Splash]

The Official Site has been updated and things are hotting up. Check out the new trailer.

JB/ Where are you now?

Voson/ I'm sitting in my office.

JB/ I doubt that!

Voson/ Why would you doubt that?

JB/ If you were in your office right now we'd be having this conversation face to face!

Bring on the Krav Maga.

DS

[Rocky]

I'm gonna have to watch the 1st two again before I watch this. I watched the trailer at the movies last night, and I kept thinking "hang on, isnt this the one I've seen?", the story sounded exactly the same as the second film!

[The_Slink]

Yum....

Another Bourne story.

To be honest I do not remember the third one. Need to reread.

[migryder]

TRAILER....................

Check out the very end where he jumps off a roof and into a building and the camera seems to follow behind him...... . Superb direction by Paul Greengrass again.

Quote - Pamela Landy

"Do you have you any idea who you're dealing with?.....................Sit down, strap in and turn on all you've got..............................this is Jason Bourne"

Official Site

There's some other big films this year too;

Die Hard

The Kingdom out in September and co-produced by Michael Mann.

War Inc. with John Cusack [Think Grosse Point Blank 2]

Spiderman

Oh!.....and do watch 'Hot Fuzz' if you get a chance......it's a laugh.

DS

Yea, I'm waitin' for this one, love the series too..

I loved Grosse Point Blank! A perfect mix of several genres...and a great sound track. They knew to include Armagideon Time(Justice Tonight/Kick It Over)...which reminds me to play it now....

I hope this War Inc. is similar. Looks like Micheal Mann has hooked up with Jamie Foxx yet again in The Kingdom, could be a nice film...maybe it has something to do with ending your name with two of the same letters?

mig

[WP33]

Yum....

Another Bourne story.

To be honest I do not remember the third one. Need to reread.

Well, having read the books, the movies have nothing to do with them- it will do you no good to read any of the books and watch the movies, but that being said, the movies kick the crap out of the books anyway. This is one of the few movies on my "first day out, must see" list.

Kick ass, David Webb!

Edited July 18, 2007 by WP33

[The_Slink]

Agreed. The books are much slower paced. I like both though.

[Stalker_Zero]

Yeah its like the one of the few movies I'm looking forward to seeing this summer. Live free or diehard was alright though.

P.S. And when are we going to get another good decent modern special forces movie? I haven't seen one in ages it seems.

Edited July 20, 2007 by Stalker_Zero

[HSantal']

Loved the books. Almost everything written by Robert Ludlum I've read. Great writer. RIP

I'm thinking of rereading them before I se the new movie.

[Foxtrot360]

This should be awesome. I saw the first two. Dont know if I should spend money on a theatre seat or just Pay-Per-View though.

[Dick Splash]

Great stuff, I went to the pictures today. After watching both DVD's yesterday evening back to back I thoroughly recommend everyone to go and see it. There's plenty of continuity and a few surprises.

DS

[Papa6]

Yum....

Another Bourne story.

To be honest I do not remember the third one. Need to reread.

Well, having read the books, the movies have nothing to do with them- it will do you no good to read any of the books and watch the movies, but that being said, the movies kick the crap out of the books anyway. This is one of the few movies on my "first day out, must see" list.

Kick ass, David Webb!

I heard about the books and the movies have nothing to do witheach other. the books were about him going after Carlos the Jackal.

[Cpl Ledanek]

weird experiences lately:

---went to the Transformer movie, guys were outnumbered by more women.

---Bourne Ultimatum today, a good 40% were senior citizens, 30% couples in 30's (at least), the remaining are mix younger 20's and some teenagers...

Common denominator with seniors: dizziness

Car chase was carried on to this movie, but prefer 2nd one.

Action flick, again prefer the 2nd, jumping from one building to another building's window---Jackie Chan's The Bronx

Hi-tech/eves dropping---scary thought

storyline: better, deeper, finalized.

amount of lines Matt Damon had: less

Worth seeing the movie: yes, but matinee.

[WP33]

I heard about the books and the movies have nothing to do with each other. the books were about him going after Carlos the Jackal.

Notice, SPOILERS AHEAD for those who haven't read the books, and this is going to be rather long:

The first book is kinda, almost, sorta close to the movie, in the sense that Bourne is fished out of the ocean, is amnesiac, makes his way to Switzerland and the bank account, then to Paris, where he has his rendezvous with Marie. However, in the novels, he spends the first part of the book in a small fishing village, nursed back to health by a self-hating, alcoholic English doctor in self-imposed exile in France. Bourne is more or less driven out of the village by hostile citizens, later, after having to defend himself against attack on a fishing boat he took work on. Marie St. Jacques is a Canadian economist in Europe for a conference. While evading pursuers who had lay in wait for him at the Swiss bank, Bourne happens upon her, brutally abducts her at gunpoint, basically as a hostage and as cover, promising her death if she blows it for him. Bourne spends most of the novel running with Marie from place to place- safehouses and hideouts half remembered from his previous time in Paris. This is where the Carlos the Jackal part comes in. Bourne was an identity (see what Ludlum did there? ) set up to be a mythical assassin who takes credit for nearly any assassination of note that occurs, impinging on the hunting grounds of Carlos the Jackal, who is Europe's premier assassin. Bourne does it for less, the say, he does it better, and can be almost anywhere at once. Of course, Bourne does none of these things- it's all a sham and a cover. This was all done under the auspices of Treadstone 71, a shell organization of CIA, in order to draw out Carlos so Bourne could kill him. Now, amnesiac, Bourne knows none of this, save little bits and pieces that come back to him at times and an instinctual sense of what he should be doing. Like the Bourne of the movies, the fieldcraft comes naturally to him, and he's mad, bad and dangerous to know. Carlos somehow discovers Bourne is running around Paris, improbably gets the info on Treadstone, and has the people running Treadstone (a small townhouse in NYC) taken out, framing Bourne in the process (the trick with the cellophane and a fingerprint is used that shows up in the movie version of Supremecy). Treadstone, meanwhile, knows nothing of the amnesia, merely that Bourne went off the wire, disappeared, took money out of the Swiss account, seems to have killed the Treadstone people and is running around Paris. They think he's gone rogue, and Alex Conklin wants him taken out. In an unlikely scenario, Bourne confronts Conklin with the truth, Conklin breaks down and wishes himself dead for thinking his old friend could do such things and nearly having him killed, then vows to help Bourne. An elaborate trap is formulated to flush Carlos out at the same time Carlos is setting up his own trap in NYC for Bourne. Carlos and Bourne have it out, and Carlos manages to escape, more or less closing the primary action of the book. During and after all this, in a very unlikely subplot, Bourne and Marie fall in love, they get married, and with the help of a psychologist supplied by Alex Conklin, try and rebuild Jason Bourne into the man he was. Guards are detailed to him because of the escape of Carlos. The final line of the book, if I remember, is after Bourne has spent time running (he does that alot to kill the mental pain from the missing chunks in his memory) he approaches Marie and says, more or less, "My name is David." He has begun to find out the Bourne identity is one he took on after his Thai wife and son were killed during the Vietnam war by an off-target airstrike, and he had joined a unit called Medusa that was tasked with political assassinations and dirty work the US government didn't want on its hands.

Though the book has its eye-rolling moments, as I illustrated above, it's really not bad and I can recommend it. The second book, Supremecy, however, was really rather stretching it for me.

At this point, Bourne is a professor at a Maine college and has reverted to his real name, David Webb. Marie and he are married and are very happy. Webb is still seeing the psych and he and Conklin are now Webb's best friends, more or less part of the family. Conklin is more or less on the outs at CIA, mostly having to do with the Treadstone debacle. Meanwhile, a shadowy character using the name of Jason Bourne is offing Chinese officials. The US government (or at least a small part of it) decide that this may cause a war, and want to use the "original" Jason Bourne to flush this guy out and stop him. In order to force the issue, they abduct Marie to Hong Kong, trying to pin it on someone else, in an attempt to make Webb do their bidding. At this point, Webb draws on the Bourne identity once more (Webb is nearly schizophrenic when he becomes Bourne. Neither one wants anything to do with the other) and travels to the Orient to retrieve his wife from what he thinks is an organized crime syndicate. When he meets with the crime lord, he's informed he must assassinate another crime lord in order to get his wife back. Unbeknownst to Webb, the target is a wealthy businessman who is planning a revolution that poses a serious threat to foreign interests in China, and Webb has been set on the track by the US, British, and Chinese governments. This business man has been using a former SAS soldier posing as Jason Bourne to scare the daylights out of his opponents. The stories of Jason Bourne have become mythical in Asia. The rest of the book consists of two side-by-side stories, one of Webb-turned-Bourne trying to track down and kill the target, and the other of Marie trying to escape and find Bourne in order to tell him the truth, as she discovers the real story. Bourne also picks up more of his back story as he utilizes an old ally from his Medusa days.

Supremacy was hard to swallow, but it had action that kept up the pace, and the back story of Bourne started to unfold even more. It's main failing is that Bourne is almost seeming like he's going to kick ass, but just never quite gets it going. The third book was one I had a hard time with, mostly because of dialog and inaccuracies with weaponry (something that plagues all of the books, quite frankly) and the unlikeliness of nearly everything that transpires.

Webb and Marie are still married, have children and are happy once again. Years have passed since the events in the Bourne Identity. Alex Conklin and Morris Panov (the psych from the previous two books) have inexplicably become the Webb's extended family, and are falsely invited to visit Webb at a local carnival (huh?) where an attempt is made on their lives in public. Webb knows it's Carlos the Jackal, returned to finish the job. So begins Webb's chase across the globe to find Carlos and finish him before Carlos can destroy Webb's family and friends. As a subplot, Carlos is now growing sick and old and wishes to destroy those he believes have been his biggest hindrances throughout his life- Jason Bourne and the Soviets. In his youth, Carlos was a true-believer revolutionary trained and groomed by the Soviets to be their ultimate tool for spreading communism, mostly through terror, but they discovered he was too dangerous and cut him off. Betrayed and angry, Carlos wants to destroy the facility that created him, a surreal and unlikely city called Novgorod, where the Soviets have constructed various "countries" emulating enemy states, and where trainees become super-spies by becoming more French than the French or more American than the Americans. Webb sends his wife and children off to Marie's brother in the Caribbean for protection while Webb himself works Conklin and CIA to hunt down and kill Carlos. Webb acts as an important member of Medusa (a new version only loosley associated with the Vietnam war iteration), now a nearly omnipotent economic force that controls the head of NATO, heads of the DoD, portions of the American and Sicilian mafia, and large NYSE firms. The plan is to use Medusa's resources to flush out Carlos. Webb just misses Carlos several times, including when Carlos finds Webb's family in the Caribbean, before Webb stages his own death. Believing Bourne gone forever, Carlos turns his revenge to Novgorod and begins its destruction. Webb tracks him there with the help of Conklin and a KGB agent named Dimitri Krupin. Carlos is finally killed in a most unrealistic way and Webb puts away the Bourne identity and rejoins his family.

The final book is the most over the top of the three, both in plot lines and in dialog, which is clunky at best and eye-watering bad at worst. The incredibly unrealistic and unlikely scenarios that transpire make it a hard book to recommend, coupled with the way the plot(s) drag from scene to scene. It reads like a much longer book. I also notice Ludlum was becoming more and more careless with how he describes weaponry, usage of weapons, military action and general spycraft. I know it was Ludlum's final novel. Perhaps he was just getting old and out of it. Who knows.

Overall, I'd say the first book is definitely worth a read, if you can get past some of the amateur-hour gunplay (I know I keep mentioning it, but it's a pet peeve of mine when someone, for instance, describes a suppressor [calling it a silencer] on a revolver, or someone shooting an AK from the hip on full auto and killing everyone in sight...) and the likelihood that Marie would fall in love with her brutal abductor. The second book is still interesting reading and it goes quickly, though we start our descent into increasingly silly scenarios. The third book is off the hook in that regard and I had a hard time even finishing it.

So, to sum up, do the books have anything to do with the movies?

Edited August 5, 2007 by WP33

[Rocky]

Cool, I just bought The Bourne Identity: Extended Edition (Region 2 DVD) and The Bourne Supremacy: Extended Edition (Region 2 DVD) on play.com for about £12. Once I have watched them I'll go and see the new movie, if it's still at the movies by then lol.

[Papa6]

one of the supervisors told me that this last jason bourne movie was the worst of the three.

the first was the best and jason bourne married that girl that got killed in the second movie, but she was a banker for the world bank.

I'll pass on this movie

[Cpl Ledanek]

It was see the movie or talk to the wife.

I suggest waiting for the DVD too.

[Dick Splash]

one of the supervisors told me that this last jason bourne movie was the worst of the three.

the first was the best and jason bourne married that girl that got killed in the second movie, but she was a banker for the world bank.

I'll pass on this movie

GOOD GRIEF!!!......have you seen any of these films?

Look......if you haven't.....rent the first two and make an 'effort' to see the third at the pictures.

DS...OUT

[WP33]

My very brief review:

The best of the three films, but one that requires the others to work. This one ties everything off neatly and closes the trilogy out perfectly. It's tense, tight, and frenetic. It's shot beautifully, scripted well, and acted expertly. The script is sparer than the previous movies, but that's okay- we know what Bourne is about by now, it's just up to him to assemble the puzzle and bring us along for the ride. The action sequences and combat are as good as any in the whole series, and it's just plain fun watching Bourne run rings around his pursuers. The long and short, it's everything I was hoping the movie would be and I'll likely go back for a repeat viewing.

[rookie]

I loved the first to films, especially Matt Damons performance. Since Paul Greengrass also directed the 3rd installment I really am looking forward to it. Germans have to wait for september 6th for the movie to start in the cinemas though.