The Bourne Ultimatum is not a TV show, per se
First and foremost this is a post about a movie. Yes, I know, this is suppose to be a TV site. Bear with me. I’ll tie it all together.
About a month ago I watched both The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy back to back on DVD. I was pretty blown away by the series incredible action and non-stop movement. It was one of those post-trailer reflex actions where the new film made me excited to get a quick refresher with the old. Yesterday afternoon I saw Ultimatum. It was, expectedly, awesome. I might go as far to say that the Bourne franchise is the best action-series of all time. [OK, here it comes] The Bourne films work (and specifically work on me) because they’re able to utilize not only the best aspects of film making (the stars, the budgets, the scale) but the best aspects of television (the character complexity, the serialization). They are the only films that give me the same sense of satisfaction I get after watching a really good episode of The Wire or Lost or any number of serialized dramas that frequently deliver. It’s also one of the few franchises where each episode leaves me dying to see the next. More after the break…
Most action sequels are a rehash of the first film, but with a new bad guy and maybe a new location and certainly there are television shows that follow this mold as well: the CSIs, the Law & Orders. The Bourne series doesn’t do this. Each installment is a continuation of the main story where you really need the information in the first to enjoy the second. The films conform to the action movie play book — there’s the car chase, the fist fight, the close call — but that’s where the similarities end.
Look, I love the Die Hard movies, but John McClane never changes. He doesn’t really learn anything, nor should he. The films need him to be a certain type of character and he happily fills the mold. Jason Bourne is far more complex. He isn’t the same character in Ultimatum that he was in Identity and certainly not the same person he was in his previous life which we’re given glimpses of in each outing. I wonder if this type of action hero were even possible before the television revolution at the beginning of this decade, as its a character that would seem far more comfortable in a weekly serial than in an action series with installments every two years.
I’m not complaining. If this were a television series it wouldn’t be able to even come close to the films scope — it’s also nice to see an action movie that can get its ass out of Los Angeles. Though don’t be mistaken, The Bourne Ultimatum (and the rest of the series) is television story-telling projected on an enormous screen for $10 a pop. Here’s hoping Hollywood continues to borrow from television and not the other way around, as the most interesting stories have been on the small screen for years.
Tags: Movie Review
August 10th, 2007 at 2:32 pm
I suppose it’s also a throwback to shows like The Fugitive (on DVD this week!) where the characters learned about themselves as the series went on. Seems like that storytelling died out in the ’80s and early ’90s, only to be reborn (re-Bourne?) with the Sopranos-era cable renaissance.