Mare Somniorum

Let’s face it, there are times you spend a few hours doing things that aren’t intellectually stimulating. That however does not mean these hours can’t be entertaining or enjoyable. Watching The Bourne Ultimatum certainly isn’t an exercise in intellectual fulfillment, but to be honest, there are worse things you could do with your time.

I’m not exactly fond of Damon labeling Bourne as the “new James Bond of our times” or some such, as I feel those two characters share awfully little, but once I get over that little hangup the Bourne trilogy has its merits. The last installment is now here and it’s one long cat and mouse game — a game that sometimes doesn’t quite know when to move on (I’m looking at the bit in Morocco in particular), but meh, it could be worse. Much, much worse.

Stiles is back as well, and, well, you’re not going to miss that. You might however forget that the movie is about that other guy dude thingy that’s busy with some bad people who want to hurt him. All that is quite irrelevant when Stiles is on screen. The upside to this is that one of the bad men that want to make this other guys life less pleasant before coming to an abrupt halt is Scott Glenn. Glenn might not be the actor of our times, but ask him to look menacing and scary and he can scare off Darth Vader while dressed in a suit, carrying a piece of paper, smiling and talking about donuts. You just do not want to mess with this guy — unless your Jason Bourne that is.

Let me also say that the love of hand-held cameras and “misframed” shots is all fine and dandy when used well (hello “Firefly”), but when your audience is looking for barf bags, you might wish to tone it down a little. There were bits (especially early on the movie) where I felt like the cameraman needed to get back on the water wagon and at least attempt to find Damon in his shots. It didn’t as much feel like you were in the middle of things as it felt like you were dead drunk trying to catch a bit of something important that was going around you, and failing miserably in your attempts. It kinda felt like you couldn’t tell what was going on since the camera was looking at everything but the action.

Of course, things go boom and people (mostly men) try to hurt each other in new and fascinating ways.  This is mostly the good part about the movie, as well as some of the writing. There are times you just can’t help laughing. Also, the ending has value onto itself, the musical score at the end is perfect. Spot on delivery for the final installment of saga that is Bourne.

Cate Blanchett returns as the queen of all queens.  I have to admit I didn’t really expect overly much, don’t get me wrong though, Blanchett is a good actress, the material is strong (it’s an amazing period in western civilization), but the thing is, we know the story.  We know the details, we know the people.  The number of  books written about Elizabeth make a nice big stack, actually, they make a pretty nice library on their own.

However, like all stories, how it’s told matters.  And I’ll flatly admit this story is told very well.  Very very well. The acting is stunning.  Blanchett provides a larger emotional span than I expected, bringing Elizabeth both to life on the screen but also making her human, a believable mortal trying to lead her children through uncertain times.  Apart from Blanchetts work, Jordi Mollá does an amazing Philip, and of course, Clive Owen embodies Raleigh in a swashbuckling way that’s supposedly highly authentic and quite fascinating.  Geoffery Rush (Walsingham) also deserves mention, as does Abbie Cornish (Beth).  All in all the cast is good, very good indeed.

On the technical front, the movie is shot to produce emotional effects with great success.  Lighting and camera work is top notch for its purpose. Sometimes you can feel it go a bit over the top, but it’s usually in “theme” with the rest of the work, so it fits in well enough.  It’s been a while since I’ve been so gripped by a movie speech as Blanchetts delivery to the soldiers upon facing the armada.

I must say I was very happy that I caught the movie in theaters.  I doubt it’s a movie I’ll watch many times over, but it’s well worth seeing.